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Football

Surprise, surprise... Catalans in the Barcajax side

This article is more than 25 years old

A long time ago, in 1995, the world was a different place. The internet barely existed outside California, a Manchester professor declared that rock-bottom house prices might never recover, and the prime minister was John Major, who supported a club named Chelsea made up of Englishmen like Paul Furlong, Gavin Peacock and Vinny Jones.

That club no longer exists. However, a team of top-class foreigners playing under the same name, in a stadium built on the site of the old Stamford Bridge, meet Barcelona in the quarter-finals of the Champions League on Wednesday. The new Chelsea have nothing in common with anything that existed in 1995. But their opponents, Barcelona, do.

For it was on May 24, 1995 that anAjax team consisting largely of underpaid schoolboys played the final of the Champions League in Vienna.

Hanging around before kick-off against AC Milan, an impatient Ronald de Boer wondered: 'What if I ask the referee if we can start 15 minutes early, like a boys' game?' In the tunnel, the 19-year-old Clarence Seedorf and his pal Edgar Davids did tricks with a football.

The match was tight. The Ajax coach, Louis van Gaal, grew so agitated that at one point he executed a flying karate kick in imitation of a foul by Milan's Marcel Desailly. Young Michael Reiziger, the Ajax right-back, was often overrun. Whenever he did something right his older team-mate, Frank Rijkaard, acting as a sort of scout leader, would shout: 'Class, Mike!'

Midway through the second half with the score 0-0, Van Gaal sent on two 18-year-olds: Patrick Kluivert, who lived at home with his mother, and the Nigerian Nwankwo Kanu, who drove around Amsterdam in a beat-up Opel. They replaced Seedorf and Jari Litmanen.

In the 85th minute Rijkaard passed to Kluivert, who scored. Ajax had won the Champions League with a team that cost less than £1 million to assemble.

On board the Barcelona plane on Tuesday will be six of the boys of Vienna: Kluivert, Ronald and Frank de Boer, Reiziger, Litmanen and Winston Bogarde, who sat on the bench in 1995. The Barcelona manager, that same Louis van Gaal, is engaged in an exercise in trying to repeat history.

There are, admittedly, one or two differences between Ajax then and Barca now. In 1995, Litmanen and the De Boer twins were kingpins of Ajax. Now, the injury-prone Litmanen is going the way of the Pope, making few appearances and looking more frail each time, while Ronald de Boer has a bad knee. He still understands football, never loses the ball, but covers much less ground. His brother, Frank, has matured from left-back into sweeper but he too lacks pace.

Kluivert, on the other hand, has become a complete centre-forward. He scores, but goals are not his primary interest. Rather, he operates as a playmaker from the front, spreading the ball to his wingers with backheels and volleys, football's most delicate big man.

The wings are the main difference between Ajax 95 and Barca 00. Ajax's pair worked hard and never held the ball for more than a second. One of those selfless team men was Finidi George and the other, believe it or not, Marc Overmars.

On leaving Ajax, Overmars underwent a personality transformation in a Los Angeles clinic and has never since passed the ball.

Barcelona's wingers are Rivaldo and Luis Figo. Rivaldo is arguably the world's best player, but no one has ever called him a selfless team man. He tends to dribble with the ball until he either loses it or scores. Figo, on the right wing, is more of a pragmatist but still likes to beat a man or two before crossing. 'Rivaldo and Figo are very extreme footballers,' grunts Ronald de Boer.

Last autumn I asked De Boer to compare Ajax of 95 with today's Barca. 'The individuals at Barca have more quality,' he said, 'but as a team we don't yet. The way we stuck together at Ajax - we are a long way off that.'

Since then, however, Barca have progressed. Rivaldo still never passes, but the others find each other so easily they sometimes seem to be playing computer football. Ruud Hesp, Barcelona's Dutch keeper, is almost as good a passer as Edwin van der Sar, the Ajax keeper of 95.

The similarities between the teams have been noted before. The Barcelona newspapers scathingly call the new team 'Barcajax'. For a long time they complained that Van Gaal was ethnically cleansing all Catalans from the side and replacing them with Dutchmen. Why, they asked, was Albert Ferrer sold to Chelsea only to be replaced by the ostensibly no more gifted Reiziger?

Gradually, however, the Catalans are ceasing to grumble. They have seen their side improve. Furthermore, this winter they saw Van Gaal drop the De Boers, Litmanen and Reiziger. The De Boers told a bemused Catalan press that they deserved to be dropped because they were playing badly. They have since come back, but Reiziger is still on the bench, watching the young Catalan Carlos Puyol in his place. Two other young locals, Xavi and Gabri, regularly play, and Josep Guardiola, Catalonia's favourite son, is restored as captain.

Van Gaal has created the same side twice, and the Barcelona version may be better than the Ajax original. On 24 May, 2000, five years to the day of their first Champions League final, his boys expect to be playing their second.

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