AllAmsterdam

In Europe, and definitely also Holland, soccer (or football) is the number one sport. Every self respecting city has its own big soccer team, including a worldclass stadium. Amsterdam has Ajax, a team that has last won the Champions League in 1995. Are they up to compete at these levels again in the near future?

Ajax has a very rich football tradition, and has developed its own distinguished style, called total football. In the 70's they achieved great successes, with players like Johan Cruijff, Johan Neeskens, etc...

Successes like in the old days have not been repeated until the 1995 UEFA Champions League victory, although they did bring forth several worldclass soccer players inbetween, such as Marco van Basten, Dennis Bergkamp and Wesley Sneijder. Therefore Ajax is now an internationally recognized institution for bringing forth amazing talents, with their football academy.

The reason that Dutch teams, and actually teams from many smaller countries, underperform internationally, has mainly to do with the money that big leagues, such as the English, generate. Those big teams in England or Spain just buy every good player from the Dutch league and achieve great successes with their internationally diverse teams.

You may think this is a littlebit unfair, but on the other hand you may come to the conclusion that smaller leagues, such as the Dutch, generate a lot more talents, because younger players get the chance to break through.

A year after the 1995 champions league, Amsterdam finished the construction of a new stadium, the Amsterdam Arena. This stadium is not only used by Ajax, but also by american football team the Amsterdam Admirals, aswell as for large events, such as concerts, and even the funeral of a locally worldfamous singer, André Hazes. This stadium is located at train station 'Station Bijlmer', in the south-east suburbs of Amsterdam.

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