2018: another bald Cruijf/Guardiola adept, Erik ten Hag, was brought in. 2017: They replaced Bosz with another bald Cruijff/Van Gaal/Guardiola adept called Marcel Keijzer, results weren't great so he got sacked after 6 monhts. Bosz was also poached by Dortmund and decided to go for it, seeing it as a unique chance. But the squad was young and small, so they didn't win the domestic league that year, hindered by those intense Thursday night games. What followed was that first stand-out season in 21 years in Europe, leading to the EL final against United, which they considered a massive success at Ajax and proof their philosophy was working. 2016:Peter Bosz took over and had a dramatic start, with those weird CL qualifiers at the start of the season.They got sent back to the Europa League, so the people in charge including Overmars decided to change the salary and budget cap to spend a little of the money they saved up and bought Ziyech, the best player in the Eredvisie at that time for 10 million, which was their biggest transfer in years. But it wasn't an actual good run to a final or semi-final, and they had some very bad European performances as well. There were some good results in Europe too under De Boer (beating Barca at home in the CL, finishing 3rd in a group with Real, Dortmund and City, knocking City who fisnished 4th in the group completely out of European football that year). Also helped by selling guys like Alderweireld, Vertonghen, Eriksen and Daley Blind. This created a massive budget surplus (1st place led to direct CL group phase qualification four years in a row), about 100 million euro. All while using mostly academy players and very cheap transfers because of the salary and budget cap, playing typical Ajax style possesion based football. They hadn't won the league in 7(!) years when he joined, but turned that around instantly by winning the league four times in a row. This happened under Frank de Boer, obviously he failed internationally as a manager, but at Ajax he did a wonderful job. Then came the so called Cruijffian revolution, including a salary cap and a limited transfer budget, and the re-focus on homegrown players instead of overpaying for mediocre dross, a clear football philosophy with the classic 4-3-3 system which Jol didn't use, etc. 2009: Ajax were in a bad financial situation and had parted ways with their tradions up until Martin Jol. Summed up it would look something like this Yeah, I was just trying to paint a picture of how the success of Ajax came from having a consistent structure throughout the club and gradually improving on that, while keeping the same philosophy over a period of almost ten years.
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