Van Basten is alarmed by Ajax’s current youth team: “They are very bad”

The Ajax quarry has always been a model of inexhaustible talent production, a mirror to which big clubs like FC Barcelona looka, even signing players too, the last of them Frenkie de Jong. From the legendary Johan Cruyff to the time Louis van Gaal recruited a large number of players who grew up in the historic Amsterdam club for the barça dressing room. That time has passed. One of their most legendary references, which was also considered a culé goal in his time to finish making history in Milan, the great Marco van Basten, raised the alarm in recent times about the level of players emerging in recent times from the ‘ajacied’ entity. His assessment admits some nuances: “They are very bad.”

Anyone who has been one of the most prolific and stylish European forwards of recent decades has attributed the poor first team performance to the pyrrhic level of his youth players. “If you, as a young player, don’t have a chance in this team, then you don’t have talent,” he said.

Ajax drew against Fortuna Sittard at home on Sunday and are having their worst Eredivisie season in sixty years. “Ajax tends to have the dominant players in Dutch football and a dominant coach,” Van Basten commented. “‘Young people are also very bad,'” he censured.

Van Basten’s naive estimate left a telling phrase about new ways of attracting talent. “Many soccer coaches and players have been fired, you know laptops are being used now,” he ironed.

“The training is not normal. That is very strange. Ajax has always been an example for talented children. This is not Ajax…”, he said.

“At Ajax there are always young players, some more talented and some not, but there are always some good ones. For several years now, almost no player has broken through,” he added.

Despite being so far, Van Basten did not reach another former youth player who at another time also had a career, such as Rafael van der Vaart. “Ajax is a shitty team with shitty players,” he said last October.