Originally posted by MWSAH:[..]
Sold their top players (Van der Vaart (Real), Sneijder (Inter), Heitinga (Everton), De Jong (Man.City), Maxwell (Barca), Zlatan (Barca), Chivu (Inter), Huntelaar (AC Milan) for example all played for Ajax) and instead they bought old players like Gabri, Oleguer and Rommedahl. They should focus on good scouting and their own youth. That was Ajax strenght, they're foolish now.
PSV was the most succesfull club in the last decade with reaching the semifinals in the CL. And Feyenoord won the UEFA Cup back in 2002. But there isn't that much money to be spend overall.
Could argue that Ajax's downfall started earlier than that. They were a true force in European football but back end of the 90's they lost a lot of talented players (Kluivert, Davids, Overmars, both De Boers, Van Der Sar, Rijkaard, Seedorf and probably more that I can't recall now. Since then it's been very hit and miss with no real sustainable team.
Yes, Ajax have probably one of the best youth setups in the world but when clubs come knocking with big money, a team in Ajax's position has little chance of persuading a big player to stay. The players that emerge through the talent pool into the Ajax first team have much better prospects elsewhere. If Ajax were as good as they were in the 80's/early 90's then they'd stand a much better chance of holding on to players.
It's a shame to see once giants in the game fall and it's even more of a shame to see new 'giants' emerge through the investment of incomprehensible sums of money.
