Thousands of fans have congregated in Stockholm to watch two of Europe’s most recognizable clubs — Manchester United and Ajax — contest Wednesday’s Europa League final.
Games like this are normally a cause for celebration, a chance for a club’s supporters to travel to a different city and see their team lift a prestigious trophy.
But Monday’s terror attack in Manchester has changed everything.
“Words don’t really do justice for how we all feel,” said United’s executive vice chairman Ed Woodward. “We’re numb. The events were sickening and all our thoughts at the moment are with the victims and the families affected by it.”
United manager Jose Mourinho added that the players can’t get the victims and their families “out of our minds and hearts.”
Though, as the world remains defiant in the face of terror, United chairman Ed Woodward said the club has still “got a job to do, no question about that, and that hasn’t been changed.”
While United in recent years have strayed somewhat from promoting youth players into the first team, instead opting for marquee signings, Ajax have stuck to their roots and academy players now form the crux of a youthful starting XI.
Few players, then, are better placed to talk about the Dutch giants’ famed academy than Edgar Davids.
Still sporting his thick, dreadlocked hair and trademark glasses, Davids looks barely a day older than the athletic midfielder who became a footballing icon in the 1990s.
During the middle part of that decade, Davids — nicknamed “The Pitbull” by then manager Louis Van Gaal — was part of unquestionably the best team in Europe.
His Ajax team reached two consecutive Champions League finals — in 1995 and 1996 — winning the first against AC Milan and losing the second against Juventus en route to becoming one of history’s most iconic teams.
The starting XI in both finals reads like a who’s who of footballing legends, though that side wouldn’t remain together for much longer.
Wednesday’s final marks the first time Ajax have reached a European final since Davids and Co. suffered shootout heartbreak against Juve in Rome.
The ties with that golden generation still run deep today. Eighteen-year-old sensation Justin Kluivert is the son of former striker Patrick, scorer of the winning goal in that famous victory over AC Milan.
The goalkeeper in both finals, Edwin Van der Sar, recently returned to the club as chief executive, while Marc Overmars is also back at the Amsterdam Arena as director of football.
Ajax’s assistant coach is Dennis Bergkamp, another product of the club’s famed youth academy, and the current young squad — the average of the the starting XI in the semifinal second leg was 22.81 — provide the perfect blank canvas for the former players to implement the club ideology.
“What a lot of clubs lack is the ability to instill the club culture (in players) — to teach somebody that is hard and it takes time,” Davids told CNN at London’s Hackey Marshes.
“But if you already have players that understand the culture of the club, and have been part of the culture, it’s easier for them to have that motivation and they can motivate other people to move in the right direction.”
As is so often the case in modern football, Ajax’s team was ripped apart after the final in 1996 and its star players departed for Europe’s biggest clubs.
Within three years of that second final in Rome, none of the players in the starting XI were still at the club.
In fact, after the defeat against Juventus, Davids would become one of Europe’s first high-profile players to benefit from the Bosman ruling, moving from Ajax to AC Milan.
That Davids sees Wednesday’s final against Manchester United as the perfect springboard for the current crop of young stars to reach a bigger club is perhaps reflective of his own experience in an Ajax shirt.
“It’s always an opportunity if you’re so young and you’re already playing a final — you know that the chances of getting an opportunity abroad is very high,” he says.
“So the next step is to evaluate if you’re ready or not and which team it’s going to be. They (the team) have done very well, but I think that a couple of players still need time to develop.”
The weight of expectation in Wednesday’s final is firmly on the shoulders of Jose Mourinho and his Manchester United players.
Having conceded, somewhat bizarrely, several months ago that finishing in the Premier League’s top four was out of reach, winning the Europa League final now provides the only route for Mourinho into next season’s Champions League.
But while the Portuguese has more than 15 years experience managing in European competition, 2016-17 has provided Ajax coach Peter Bosz with his first foray into Europe.
Having taken over at the start of the season, Bosz initially struggled to implement his philosophy onto this young team, but a resurgence in the second half of the season saw Ajax run Feyernoord close to the Eredivisie title and qualify for a first European final in more than 20 years.
While Davids believes Ajax should still be wary of United’s star players, he is convinced they have nothing to be afraid of.
“It’s definitely going to be very hard, but I’ve seen United play so far this season and I was definitely not impressed — absolutely not impressed,” he says.
“Even last week when I saw the game (against Southampton), they didn’t look like Man United. So that definitely gives Ajax a big chance to win, as does Ajax’s style of play.
“But on the other hand, they still have two or three players than can decide a game in a second.”
This Ajax team may not boast the same star names as their predecessors, but a win will go a long way to finally placing the club back on the European map.
