Total Football: how the Ajax way works

THE intellectualisation of soccer has, they say, always foundered on a one simple problem – football players. Unless, of course, you’re Dutch.

The propagators of Total Football in the 1970s elevated an industrial sport from the spit and sawdust shop floor to an erudite, urbane beautiful game and enlightenment dawned over Europe.

Ajax Amsterdam is, of course, a catchword for home-grown productivity, expert training and, above all, success. In a country that gave the world Vincent Van Gogh and Rembrandt its greatest club has delivered innumerable soccer-playing artists in Johan Cruyff, Marco Van Basten and Dennis Bergkamp.