A MERE month ago Ajax Football Club, long considered one of Holland's more stable institutions, was giving the impression it had lapsed into the ways of a dysfunctional family.
The sounds of internal unrest and sometimes open dispute which came for the Amsterdam Arena would have made the recent discord at Celtic Park seem like the unison of the Vienna Boys' Choir.
Despite their attempts to deny so, the declaration of intent by Louis Van Gaal to leave the club at the end of the season led to destabilisation in the dressing room, where even those twin pillars of respectability and reliability, Ron and Franck de Boer, contemplated leaving the club in what looked like a stampede to get out while the going was good.
Then up spake Jesus Gil, the president of Atletico Madrid and mayor of Marbella, whose welfare policies would have gained approval from Genghis Khan and who made his now infamous comment that Ajax had so many black players on the field that he felt he had been in the Congo. He opined that the club must have had a gingerbread-making machine to produce them. These words had a cathartic effect on Ajax. Whether by artifice or by genuine outrage they had suddenly found common cause again, to counter the offensive racialist tone of the comments.
''The Ajax president wrote a letter of observation to UEFA on the matter,'' Van Gaal says. ''They told them that as a gesture they would boycott the invitation to the reception and dinner offered by Atletico the night before the return leg. I pinned this letter on the dressing room wall, so that the players would be aware of how the whole club felt. It had something of an effect.''
The rest is history. They outfought Atletico in a game which Van Gaal considers gave him one of the proudest moments of his career, but in analysing the game added an interesting caveat. ''We have to be careful about the result, though, because it was not the traditional Ajax way,'' he told me guardedly. ''We are not given to being emotional about a game, but it was a special task. When we play a cooler, passing game then that is the true Ajax style, and I hope we can restore that against Juventus.''
He is an admirer of Marcello Lippi, though. ''I think he did the right thing in getting rid of Vialli and Ravanelli and I believe he has made his side even stronger by doing that. They are the best team in the world, but over two games I honestly think we are capable of beating them.''
Juventus recently were beginning to show signs of wear and tear, but their thrashing of Milan is perhaps the sign of players responding to the challenge of the home straight with renewed vigour. And there was an ominous sign in the performance of Zidine Zidane, their extremely influential French midfielder, against Sweden last week that he might be going off the boil as he did last season at this time. In Euro96 he would have had to wear bandages to be seen, he was so invisible.
It is a point I brought up with him. ''I knew that after the championships many people must have thought that Juventus had wasted their money on me,'' he said ''but what helped me was just the fact that I had realised an ambition to play in Italy and being there seemed to bring out the best in me. I see Ajax are improving, but I think we have the better players now.''
As you stand beside him you begin to wonder how this tall, slightly stooped figure can possible produce the mercurial lightness of foot he displays at his best. He did this in the decimation of Paris St Germain in the European Super Cup and blotted out any lingering nostalgia for Roberto Baggio. Del Piero's absence will be balanced by the injury to Patrick Kluivert, of Ajax, although overall I believe Ajax will suffer more by this.
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