As I sat at a football viewing centre in the early days of March, I watched on with utmost disbelief as my favourite team Real Madrid were ripped apart bit by bit and outclassed on their own turf and in their own favourite competition by a certain group of energetic and tireless young men. I bent my head for a moment, trying to excogitate on the possibilities of my favourite team scaling through this battle as winners just as they have always done in seasons past.

I thought of Diego Simeone’s Atletico Madrid of 2014, this Ajax team reminded me so much of them through one particular aspect, “sturdiness”, that “die hard” attitude, but then I smiled, knowing full well that Simeone’s men always get weakened as the game reaches its latter stages, they are humans after all, not machines. At the end of the ninety minutes of that pulsating encounter between the Dutchmen and the White men, it dawned on me that I have very much underrated this current Ajax team for they turned out to be much more than just a “do-or-die” men/boys.

Ajax is a team with mixture of experience, class and energy. The club is known to cherish the importance of youth players, they are known to breed young and classy talents from their youth academy, an initiative reported to be kick-started by the late Johan Cruyff. Since their last participation in a final in the Uefa Champions League competition back in 1996, one which they lost to Juventus on penalties, Ajax experienced something sort of a decline in European dominance since then until this season.

No one noticed their displays against German giants and Champion Bayern Munich in the group stage of the Uefa Champions League, no one took them serious because they were having some sort of subpar performance in their league but I began to take them serious after they knocked out defending champions of the Uefa Champions League and all time highest winning team of the competition Real Madrid with great style and everyone began to look into their biography after they knocked out Italian giants and a Cristiano Ronaldo inspired Juventus and now, everyone is forced to give them a round of applause after beating Tottenham in England with elegance last night to take a huge step towards playing in their first Uefa Champions league final since 1996.

The oldest man on the Ajax side last night was Schone who is 32 years old, then you find striker Tadic who is 30 years old and then Danny Blind who is 29 years old. The rest of the first 11 squad is below 26 years and more of under 24 with their captain De Ligt just 19 years old. Yet with such a young squad, Eric Ten Hag’s team are fearless, energetic, sturdy, classy and cruel. They blow teams away with ease no matter your status, home and abroad and this has prompted me to ask this question; Which team has got the vim to stop AFC Ajax?