Ajax to the future

Ajax rolled back the years with their vintage display against Manchester City in the Champions League, and with a starting XI that boasted seven academy graduates the future looks bright for the four-time European Cup winners.

Frank De Boer's side had an average age of just 24.36 years and boasted little European experience, but tore apart the defending Premier League champions who lurch from one poor showing to another. Mancini might be the domestic cup specialist, winning the Coppa Italia with three clubs as a manager and the FA Cup with City, but his performances in Europe have never lived up to billing.

Despite winning three straight scudettos with Internazionale in 2006, 2007 and 2008, Mancini was sacked by the hard to please Massimo Moratti after failing to impress in Europe and the same infliction seems to hinder Manchester City. They have been slow starters domestically and against the elite of Europe these defensive errors will be punished, as Ajax discovered and who grew in confidence before controlling the game.

Despite the excellent showing, it is unlikely that Ajax will escape Group D, but De Boer and his assistant Dennis Bergkamp will have been delighted with the way their young team out-manoeuvred Manchester City. Manchester City were poor last week and offered little in attack, but against Dortmund and Real, the Dutch champions defence was harshly exposed. Hardly a surprise, when you look at the calibre of defenders who have left the Amsterdam Arean in the last three years; Vermaelen, Vertonghen, Van der Wiel and Anita.

Ajax have retained their offensive-minded players for the last two seasons; Christian Eriksen pulling the strings along with nationalised Dutchman, and captain at just 23, Siem De Jong. The forward interchanged position with Ryan Babel constantly and slammed home the equaliser for Ajax in some style. However, if Ajax continue to flounder in the group stages without progressing to the knock-outs they will be unable to fend of preying clubs who take a shine to their young stars.

The Dutch giants have been unlucky to draw Real Madrid in their group two years running, and wind up in this years 'group of death', but young stars like Eriksen and De Jong are likely to leave for a stronger league in the near future. The Bosman ruling decimated the Louis Van Gaal drilled Champions League winning side of 1994-95 and the growing financial excesses of the Premier League and the big two in Spain will continue to threaten Ajax.

Eriksen has been on the radar of European heavyweights for three years, and despite two failed showings for Denmark on the international stage he is the most attractive prospect in the current set-up. The Dane was actually on trial at Chelsea as a 15-year-old, eventually electing to further his career in the Netherlands but the next young Danish star making headlines for Ajax is 18-year-old, Viktor Fischer.

Fischer burst onto the scene as a result of a hat-trick which eliminated Liverpool from the inaugural NextGen Series, as Ajax made it to the final of the new tournament designed to give under-19s an early taste of continental competition. He finished as top-scorer with nine goals en route to the final, where Ajax were beaten by an Inter Milan side, led by current boss Andrea Stramaccioni, and has started equally well in this years competition, scoring four of the 10 goals that Ajax have smashed home in their first two games.

The teen is more of an out-and-out finisher than his compatriot, Eriksen, and made his first ever appearance for the full team in the 3-3 draw with Hercules last weekend. Manchester United were linked with a £5 million bid for the starlet last summer and if his goal-scoring form continues this season he could find himself negotiating with even more clubs.

A product of the De Toemkest academy, Fischer is yet to make his full debut for the Danish national team, but a record of 20 goals from 30 under-17 games suggest his breakthrough will come soon. De Toemkest literally translates as the future, in Dutch and it is easy to see why it is held in such high regard around the world.

Ajax are enshrined to the 4-3-3 formation and much like La Masia, Toemkest preaches a particular style of football; somewhere between 'Total Football' and tika-taka. General manager, David Endt, reveals the philosophy in place, "We're not developing for other clubs; we're developing for ourselves. This is football how we want to play it."

Statistics have become a integral part football coaching in the last decade and Ajax are ahead of their time with their latest innovation - the miCoach performance centre, adjacent to De Toemkest. Resembling an oversized golf ball, the centre contains pressure plates, high-definition cameras for biomechanical analysis of technique and an artificial pitch to replicate the Amsterdam Arena.

Personality and psychology are also analysed in detail, with head of sports science, Edwin Goedhart, explaining that: "talent is 80%... training is 20%. The rest is what we can add [mental coaching/analysis]. Even if it's only 1% improvement, spread over a team that is 11%."

All students at De Toemkest undertake neuropsychological testing and this is used to quantify why certain players make better in-game decisions than others. Goedhart raises a fascinating point about how these tests could "go a long way to developing more natural Dutch leaders, arguably the one failing of the Ajax system" and to a greater extent the national team.