While it took longer than expected, Ajax Amsterdam claimed the Dutch Eredivisie title on the penultimate day of the season thanks to a 5-0 win over Heerenveen which ensures second-place PSV Eindhoven won’t be able to catch up.
For Ajax boss Erik ten Hag, who will depart the club at the end of the season to take the Manchester United managerial position, it was his third Eredivisie league title in four seasons with the club.
Man United fans will be quietly celebrating their new boss winning a championship after a rousing campaign that showcased both goalscoring prowess (96 scored) and defensive solidity (17 allowed) by his team. In the process the club has continued to develop a steady influx of young talent, who have contributed significantly alongside older veterans throughout Ten Hag’s managerial tenure.
Sporting News brings you a deeper look at how Ajax won the Eredivisie title this season and what it could mean for Ten Hag at Manchester United.
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How did Erik ten Hag win the Eredivisie title?
Ajax’s attack-minded philosophy has resulted in a renaissance for striker Sebastien Haller, who has scored an incredible 46 goals in 59 Ajax appearances after a failed two-year spell at West Ham.
It has also seen the club set an incredible +79 goal difference mark in Eredivisie play, with an outlandish 96 goals scored to just 17 goals allowed through 33 games played in 2021-22 as of May 11.
However, the team slipped towards the end of the season, and the wait to confirm the league title was longer than anticipated. A 1-0 home loss to Benfica in mid-March also saw Ajax bow out of the Champions League in the Round of 16, and they also lost the April 17 final of the KNVB Dutch Cup, 2-1 to rivals PSV.
Still, the season as a whole was a rousing success. One of the best moves made by Ten Hag to help the club attain domestic silverware was his management of the goalkeeper position.
The club was handed a bout of adversity when first-choice goalkeeper Andre Onana was handed a nine-month doping ban by UEFA in February, 2021. That saw Ten Hag select 38-year-old Remko Pasveer as his new starter this season, a bold choice at the time of the appointment. Pasveer’s ball distribution prooved solid, with an 81 percent pass success rate per league match (including 91 percent in his own half) to go along with a 46 percent long-ball success rate.
Pasveer then fractured his finger in mid-February, bringing Maarten Stekelenburg into the frame. That switch coincided with the club’s dip in defensive solidity, as Stekelenburg conceded 12 goals across the last nine matches and picked up just one clean sheet. That’s a far cry from Pasveer’s glittering record of just four goals conceded in 20 league matches and 17 clean sheets.
Ajax also focused on identifying and developing versatile players to build a team that shows off an unmatched fluidity on the pitch. Defensive midfielder Edson Alvarez has one of the most remarkable heat maps in European football, cropping up everywhere on the pitch, including in the penalty area in front of net. With Alvarez patrolling the middle of the park, the wingers hug the touchline and stretch the field, with Dusan Tadic leading the Eredivisie in successful crosses by a significant margin.
Ten Hag has worked to develop Ajax youth products: 20-year-old Jurrien Timber was the team’s most reliable center back, while 19-year-old Ryan Gravenberch saw over 3,200 minutes in central midfield. In addition to the 24-year-old Alvarez, he also went overseas to recruit 24-year-old Argentine center back Lisandro Martinez, and 22-year-old Brazilian sensation Antony. The trio all arrived at Ajax within the last three years, growing into regular national team contributors for their respective countries.
Finally, the leadership of veterans Tadic and Daley Blind glued the squad together and helped bring the aforementioned players through successfully. Despite being 33 and 32 years old respectively, the two players led the team in minutes this season, and Tadic produced a gargantuan 36 goal contributions, just behind the prolific Haller, who put up 39.
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What formation will Ten Hag use at Man United?
Having openly admitted to being heavily influenced by Pep Guardiola during his time at Bayern Munich, Erik ten Hag deployed a very attack-minded 4-2-4 formation at Ajax to enormous success this season.
While that 4-2-4 can be devastating, the Ajax side also benefits from being a big fish in a small pond, padding its numbers against far inferior Eredivisie sides. His 2018-19 Champions League run featured a similar but slightly more pragmatic 4-3-3 that featured a double-pivot in midfield that has its roots in Dutch football, but has become widely popular across the globe over the last decade.
He has been known to occasionally deploy a 4-2-3-1 or a 4-4-2 diamond as well, although his versions of those formations all end up having the same key principles: a pair of midfielders through the middle that play off each other, and a pair of attacking wingers that pin opposing fullbacks to their own end lines.
What really marks Ten Hag as a manager is his devotion to Total Football, the Dutch-born philosophy of using triangles to overload key areas of the pitch both on and off the ball. This system feeds off the versatility of players in various positions on the field, allowing them to flow freely around the pitch. This approach has been widely adopted across the globe over the last 15-20 years, and it’s a feature of Ten Hag’s playing style.
In the famed 2019 Champions league run, midfielder Frenkie de Jong became a worldwide sensation due to his ability to perform multiple roles in midfield, earning him an eventual move to Barcelona. Ten Hag also helped fuel the rise of Hakim Ziyech and Matthijs de Ligt, both of whom eventually made moves to bigger European clubs.
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Trophies won by Erik ten Hag
While Ten Hag was trophy-less during his first three managerial spells, understandably so as he took charge of smaller clubs, that changed when he joined Ajax.
Since taking charge of the Dutch giants, Ten Hag has guided the club to the Dutch league title three times, also leading the club to the Dutch Cup on two occasions. He may have earned a fourth title had it not been for COVID-19 ending the Dutch league early in 2019-20 with the club sitting atop the table, but no title was awarded.
In Europe, he has yet to win silverware, but he has performed quite well at times, including in the 2018-19 season when he saw the club into the semifinals of the Champions League, beating Real Madrid along the way. The run came to an end in heartbreaking fashion as Tottenham engineered a late comeback to win 3-2 on aggregate.
Ten Hag has won the Dutch league’s Coach of the Year award twice, first in 2016 with FC Utrecht and then again in 2019 after Ajax’s stunning season. He also finished fourth in voting for FIFA’s Coach of the Year honor that same year.
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Erik ten Hag silverware:
- Eredivisie title: 2018-19, 2020-21, 2021-22
- KNVB Beker (Dutch Cup): 2018-19, 2020-21
- Johan Cruyff Shield: 2019
Erik ten Hag awards & honors:
- Rinus Michaels Coach of the Year Award: 2016, 2019
- FIFA The Best Award, Men’s Head Coach: 2019 (4th place)
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