The Ajax team of 1994-95 is rightly considered to be one of the greatest ever. Winning the
Eredivisie title without losing a single game, they also won the Champions League without
dropping a game, and defeated Gremio to take the Intercontinental Cup. In fact, they only
lost once all season, a KNVB Cup Quarter-Final against Feyenoord after extra time. No other
side in history has won the Champions League while also going unbeaten to win their domestic title.
Their manager was Louis van Gaal. Van Gaal was a systems-orientated coach, one who believed
in rehearsed movements, specific responses to situations – wingers could take on one
opponent by dribbling, for example, but if faced by two, would have to pass infield
– and who used data and opposition analysis heavily, well before it was the norm.
Van Gaal was a product of the Dutch school of Total Football, begun by Rinus Michels and refined
by Johann Cruyff. The key tenet of the philosophy was to control space: make the pitch big in
attack, with width and positional interchanges, and small in defence, with a high line, pressing,
and vertical compactness. Van Gaal took a less individualistic approach to this, though,
privileging team cohesion over star players, and building his Ajax team mostly from youth products.
The average age of the starting eleven who won the Champions League final was 24.7,
with only two starters over 25; both substitutes were 18.
Van Gaal used a 3-4-3, which was instituted when Cruyff pushed a defender into midfield to create
a diamond shape. This was partly because most Eredivisie sides used two attackers,
so three defenders still had an advantage, and because goalkeepers could be the spare man with
the ball at their feet, with passing ability prized almost above goalkeeping fundamentals.
Ajax’s wide defenders, who were technically centre backs in a back three but played effectively like
full backs, often stayed quite wide. Generally, Frank de Boer played on the left but tucked in
a bit, while Michel Reiziger was extremely fast and would press higher on the right.
Danny Blind, one of the team’s veterans at 31, was generally the central centre back,
and the three were protected by the deepest midfielder, mostly Frank Rijkaard,
another of the older players who had re-joined the club after a very successful spell at AC Milan.
These two would read the game and, once in possession, Rijkaard would often drop off
and he and Blind would bring the ball up while the full backs offered width.
The diamond formation allowed for numerical superiority in midfield, as the two flanking
midfielders stayed relatively central. They would act as pressers, but also were there to show as
passing options for the wide attackers or the pivot, Rijkaard. Van Gaal placed heavy emphasis
on retention of possession, and the two central midfielders, usually 21 year old Edgar Davids
and 18 year old Clarence Seedorf, were crucial for this, as their energy not only won back the ball,
but their positional intelligence and constant movement meant Ajax could keep it with ease.
Width in attack came from the wide players of the front three.
Marc Overmars was the star winger on the left, with Finidi George often used on the right.
Their job was to stretch opposition full backs out, creating space centrally, before getting
in a cross. And while Ajax would progress the ball ably through midfield, the wingers would
often be hit with long diagonal passes from Blind, Rijkaard, or the full backs, too – van Gaal was
not afraid to go long if his wingers were able to isolate weaker players and drive past them.
The creation of space centrally was also achieved by the centre-forward,
usually Patrick Kluivert or the highly versatile Ronald de Boer, who occupied the centre-backs,
pushing them back. That left space for the tip of the midfield diamond, the 10,
the creative hub of the team who also, crucially, set the tone for the team’s press.
The 10 was also expected to advance up to support the striker – Dennis Bergkamp’s use in this role,
before he left in 1993, led to the coining of the term ‘shadow striker’,
as his exploitation of space and his late arrivals into the box made him hard to mark.
In the 1994/95 team this role was usually played by Jari Litmanen,
technically superb and hard-working, or the equally gifted Nwankwo Kanu.
The midfielders would also join in, but what was noticeable was that players tended not to overlap.
The full backs would stay behind the wingers, and the flanking midfielders
would push wide but not overlap – allowing for the recycling of possession and switches of play,
but meaning that the wingers always had room to run into.
In the league, and against weaker teams in European competition, Ajax would
really compress the space, with the full backs defending beyond the half-way line at times,
shielded by the positional acumen of Blind and Rijkaard, and the excellence of Edwin van der
Saar, a genuine sweeper-keeper. Against the bigger teams in Europe, van Gaal was not afraid to drop
his deepest midfielder even deeper and rely on the industry of Davids and Seedorf to maintain
midfield superiority. The lack of overlaps also maintained this solidity, and while
Ajax were not a team of superstars in the way that Cruyff’s Barcelona were, the discipline of
the defence and midfield facilitated the match winners: Kluivert, Litmanen, and the wingers.
While Ajax retained the league the very next year, they would lose the Champions League final
to another Italian team, Juventus, on penalties. Van Gaal went on to see success with Barcelona,
AZ Alkmaar and Bayern Munich, while many of the team went on to achieve honours at other clubs
as the squad was gradually broken up. But in that 1994/95 season,
van Gaal and his young side were the best team in the world,
playing a brilliant, intelligent brand of the game which remains strongly influential to this day.