Club snapshot: Ajax Amsterdam - Brief Article

Soccer Digest, May, 2002 by Scott Plagenhoef

* In 1969, Ajax became the first Dutch team to qualify for the Champions Cup Final. They lost to Milan, but after a slight stumble, won the competition from 1971-73.

* The early 1970s Ajax teams are credited with developing the system of "Total Football," which stresses intelligence, fitness, and the ability for any player to excel at every field position.

* Ajax was founded in March 1900 by a group of businessmen at the Cafe Oost-Indie. The team's roots, however, lie in Union, founded in 1883 by a three friends, including Han Dade, who at the time supplied the club with its only leather ball.

* It took two years in the Dutch Football Association for the club to be promoted to the Second Division, but Ajax did not climb into the First Division until 1911. They have remained there ever since.

* In the 1920s, the Ajax Amsterdam club fostered a love of the Anglo and the American by adding a cricket team, a baseball team, and a jazz band.

* The club's trademark white shirt with a single red Stripe was developed after the club's 1911 promotion in order to avoid confusion with the red-and-white clad Sparta. Around the same time, the team's name officially included `Amsterdamsche' because there was another team in Ledien known as Ajax.

* Ajax's 27 division championships and 25 international trophies make them easily the most accomplished team in the history of Dutch soccer.

* After its invasion, in 1941, Germany prohibited mixed sports clubs, and Ajax was forced to expel their Jewish members and spectators. Some Ajax players were interned in German labor camps, one of whom, Jack Reynolds, organized matches inside Gleiwitz between prisoners.

* In 1907, Ajax was forced to leave their Amsterdam Noord home for a field at the Middenweg in Watergraafsmeer. The new home's lack of facilities forced the club to use a local cafe as a dressing room.