Team Focus: Explaining Ajax's style under De Boer

The secret of long-term success lies in cultivating a distinctive set of values, as Jim Collins put forward in his bestseller “Good to Great”. This usually means promoting from within and laying down deep local roots. It’s advice that has been followed in Amsterdam; next month Frank de Boer will reach a historic milestone, serving three years as manager of Ajax.

Now to some this wouldn’t be given the time of day, but considering he’ll only be the fourth man to do so since the inception of the Eredivisie (after Rinus Michels, Louis van Gaal and Ronald Koeman), it’s a feat worth commemorating. Under his stewardship he’s kept an ever-changing squad competitive – winning three consecutive championships – and it’s all down to resurrecting their “traditional approach”.

It’s the way they’ve adapted to losing individuals – some of whom were important than others – on a yearly basis, not allowing it to faze them, that has seen De Boer’s profile rise. His first starting ever eleven – against AC Milan (December 6, 2010) – contained four current Premier League players: Maarten Stekelenburg, Jan Vertonghen, Christian Eriksen and Luis Suárez, plus Gregory van der Wiel – a World Cup finalist – and Toby Alderweireld now at Atlético Madrid.

From the onset it was clear that his coaching philosophy of one-touch, combination football heavily based on possession and positional interchange – in other words a modernised / watered down version of totaalvoetbal – had been shaped by Louis van Gaal and Johan Cruyff. He enjoyed success with the former at Ajax and Barcelona, whilst the latter played an important role during his youth career.

In essence De Boer has combined the Cruijffianen and Van Gaalisten Schools – individual and collectivism intertwined. Each individual’s strength combines to make a unified eleven: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts – to implement his own vision. Within his system, every position – thereby player – is assigned with several basic tasks to carry out with our without the ball (so if you lose Vertonghen someone like Niklas Moisander can step in and carry out the same duties).

Dennis Bergkamp, current assistant manager, noted in his autobiography that under Van Gaal the system was sacred and every player was equal. This has rubbed off on De Boer. There’s no dependency on one or two individuals. “This is mainly down to the slick collective spirit Frank de Boer has forged,” Sjoerd Mossou wrote in Algemeen Dagblad. Every player contributes collectively. “Football is a team sport,” De Boer would remind you.

Teamwork is fundamental to De Boer. Universality is essential. Players need to be comfortable in multiple positions and roles. A facet integral to their positional interchange game is that once an area is vacated a teammate drops in – maintaining the shape (either 3-1-4-2 or 2-1-4-3) – a style of play familiar to De Boer. Individuality is also important. During each match his players are left to their own problem solving devices. “Players should not just run with their legs, but with their head as well,” as Guus Hiddink once said. Individual-based training (or the ‘Michels model’) has helped.

De Boer, like his mentors, doesn’t believe in adapting to the opponent but rather playing his own game. The aim of each game is to dominate through possession; circulation football is used as a means to not only create goalscoring opportunities but also as a defensive weapon. If you have the ball the opposition can’t harm you. No team boasts a higher average in the Eredivisie when it comes to possession (62.8%) and Ajax have attempted over a thousand more passes than any other side (7917), with an accuracy of 87.8%.

To some keeping the ball is frowned upon. On a few occasions Ajax have even been labelled ‘boring’, but for De Boer it’s everything, and not just because it’s the only way he knows how to play. The simple truth is that without it his side isn’t very good. However, there’s something important which is often overlooked: keeping possession conserves energy. His team seldom passes more than ten metres during a build-up phase, letting the ball do the running, but every pass needs to be precise: it must be a metre ahead, never into feet, this way the circulation is kept flowing. It’s little surprise that Ajax have played a higher proportion of their passes sideways (58.4%) than any other team.

It’s also used to break down stubborn opposition. The majority of sides they face play in a compact 6-3-1 formation: the general idea being to make the pitch small, suffocate their creative players, and hit them on the break. To counter that, the centre-backs play a key role by constructing from the back. Stefano Denswil (104.4), Joël Veltman (98) and Moisander (95.4) are averaging the most passes per game in the division.

Ajax only play horizontally after a vertical pass; a case in point being when the centre-backs go out with ball, opening up the field and moving wider so the right or left-back can join the midfield line. De Boer has talked about it: the centre backs provoke the opponent, invite them forward, then if the opponent applies quick pressure the ball goes to the other central defender who then makes a vertical pass.

This leads us to another Van Gaalisten concept he’s incorporated: ‘pressure play’. Ajax press the moment they lose possession, seen as the perfect time because the opposing player who has just won the ball is vulnerable. He’s wasted energy to win it. Possession needs to be regained in three seconds, usually by forming a wall of three behind the player closing down. If they haven’t won it back, instead of falling back and regrouping, they move up the pitch using a high defensive line and forming a compact ten-man wall.

Once they’ve won possession the job is to keep the ball, controlling the ebb and flow until a gap appears (normally through the opposition becoming tired). Subsequently each attack is built patiently with the desire to finish with a sweeping move – a higher percentage of their total chances created have come from open play than any other team (83.8%).

Peerless man-management has allowed everything to come to fruition; with the average age of the side in the early 20s. De Boer’s duties have extended far beyond simply coaching, stating, “You’re effectively a surrogate dad.” He’s not a totalitarian like Van Gaal but isn’t afraid to crack the whip either. A typical free-thinking Amsterdammer, even though he was born in Hoorn, the coach is a fundamentalist in every sense of the word.

With a four-year extension having been signed De Boer’s aim is to follow in his predecessors’ footsteps from an ideological point-of-view. Michels, Cruyff and Van Gaal, in their respective eras, moulded Ajax into their image, leaving a legacy which is still breathlessly spoken of today. His revolutionary act of re-implementing their ideals – as well as adding a few of his own to combat the tribulations of 21st century life – has given him a chance to do that.