We love you Ajax, we do...

Oh dear. Things haven’t been going well at Ajax for the last few years, but losing your head coach to become the top assistant at Chelsea is just another painful reminder that Ajax is no longer one of the top 50 clubs in Europe, let alone amongst the elite.

The writing has been on the wall for about 10 years now. Back when Ajax was sexy, ESPN2 showed a weekly Dutch soccer game every Sunday morning in the early- to mid-90s. Naturally, as Ajax was a European powerhouse at the time, they were on every almost weekend, meaning I saw a heaping serving of 5-0 wins over team names I couldn’t even pronounce. It didn’t matter. As a new fan of the game (my history dated back to Paul Caligiuri’s 1990 World Cup berth-clinching goal at Trinidad & Tobago in November 1989), I finally had a team I could follow, watch and root for.

Nevermind the fact that the Dutch lost in the second round to the hated Germans in Italia 90, I was hooked by their delightful soccer and bright orange jerseys. That fall, a public channel carried RAI Italian games, the only regular soccer I could watch back then, and AC Milan’s Dutch trio of Marco Van Basten, Frank Rijkaard and Ruud Gullit instantly gave me a team to watch. After doing my homework through reading World Soccer magazines - which, comically, were months behind in getting here, and already months behind carrying recent news to begin with – I learned that Van Basten and Rijkaard had came from Ajax. I started to read a lot about Ajax and liked what I was hearing. They were a team that didn’t have the kind of money needed to compete with bigger clubs, but they were incredibly successful by bringing young talent to the fore. During high school, Ajax was not only on TV every weekend, they were making a captivating run towards the 1995 Champions League title. They ended up beating the millionaires of Milan, of all teams, with Patrick Kluivert scoring the winning goal. He was 18.

Eventually, big money and, more devastatingly to a club like Ajax, free agency, got into the European game, and Ajax lost most of its young players who were now household names to Italy and Spain for nothing in return. This ripped the club apart over a stretch of two years, timed perfectly with the move to the new, modern, soul-less Amsterdam Arena. The club made another run in Europe in 1996, losing to Juventus on penalty kicks in the final, and a year later, when they were thrashed by Juve again in the semifinals. This was the time my interest really started to gain, mainly because of the Internet and a more reliable arrival time for World Soccer, as well as finding an obscure videotape documentary on their youth system, which I still have. I’d follow the team by going online at the local public library (!), taping Champions League games and watching them when I got home after work and generally hid the fact that, although I was really into college sports, the NBA, NHL, NFL and baseball, I was embarrassed about liking soccer.

There hasn’t been much to cheer about the last 10 years, save for the odd league and cup title and Ajax’s run to the 2003 Champions League semis, which so cruelly was ended after they outplayed AC Milan. During a few weeks spent outside the northern Holland city of Groningen (pronounced XXXXCCCCHHHHRRROOOO-ni-XXXXXCCCHHHH-en) with US Soccer in May 2002, we spent two nights in Amsterdam before heading home. Our coach, Thomas Rongen, was from Amsterdam and played for Ajax, and his buddy Ronald Koeman, then the Ajax coach, gave us a behind-the-scenes tour of Amsterdam Arena. Needless to say, it was pretty freakin’ awesome and a dream come true, right down to seeing the locker room and resisting the temptation to pee on Zlatan Ibrahimovich’s lamborghini (he was a misfit for Ajax back then).

These days I follow Ajax mostly via YouTube highlights, which is better than I have been able to do the last 10 years, but something is missing. I’ve always wanted to go see a game there, but who in their right minds would travel to Europe to watch Eredivisie voetbal, besides these guys? It’s hard being an Ajax fan these days, and there’s little hope of it getting any better. Or at least very hard to justify having a non-English team as your favorite.

I really hope Henk ten Cate’s decision to leave isn’t a sign of further things to come for the club. I’m okay with him leaving – he hasn’t been the most beloved coach at Ajax following his successful stint as the top assistant at Barcelona – and figured it would happen anyway, but not to become an assistant. I’m sure Roman’s just warming up the stove for Guus Hiddink to bring that delightful soccer that has charmed so many people to the dilapidated whorehouse that has become Chelsea, but it's yet another reason for me to dislike and distrust them.

But me? It’s obvious I’ll never be a Chelsea fan. I just wish it was cool again to follow teams who did it the right way, the non-Chelsea way. I just wish the good ol’ days, like 1995, would come around again (with the technology we have today, of course).

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Matchday 1 con't: Whaaaa?

There's crazy, and then there's the absolute lunacy of Chealsea boss Jose Mourinho quitting the Blues less than two months into the season, and in the midst of a Champions League campaign.

Leave it to Mourinho, the sports most insatiable attention whore, to steal the headlines on a day his team isn't even playing. According to early reports, Mourinho added a touch of class to his abandoning the team by informing Chelsea skipper John Terry via text message. Details of the breakup are still under wraps, but it's not hard to imagine that the "Special One" quit in a fit of pique, considering he's done little except behave like a child the last three seasons.

The Times' always entertaining Martin Samuel has penned the first of what promises to be many incisive columns on the Mourinho era, and how it ended. It's so well-written that I suspect it's been hanging around in a makeshift obit file, since the only thing surprising about this divorce is that it happened so early in the season, and at Mourinho's suggestion.

The million-pound question, now, is what we can expect of the Blues the rest of the way out. They head to Old Trafford, Sunday, for what has the makings of a bloodbath at the hands of Ronaldo and Co., which could be the first domino to fall in what's now promising to be a disastrous EPL campaign (a campaign that wasn't looking all that hot, mind you, when Mourinho was still in charge). As for the Champions League, which probably now registers as an afterthought for the Blues, it's as hard to imagine them not earning one of the top two spots in group play as it is to imagine them getting very far at all in the knockout stages (again, this isn't a marked change from Chelsea's prospects with TSO at the helm).

Regardless, it's safe to assume the only group involved that will, in time, regret Mourinho's departure from English soccer — because he's got a better chance of bedding Gemma Atkinson than getting another EPL job after his puerile departure from Stamford Bridge — is the media, which relished Mourinho's willingness to slander just about everyone, including his own players.

As for the games themselves, Wednesday's slate traded in Tuesday's plodding pace — and unexpectedly ugly performances by favorites — for a couple of blowouts and an otherwise uneventful victories by favorites (no, I do not considering the "tearful" 1-0 victory for Man-U over Sporting to be eventful). About the only thing I can think of that's remotely notable is how little Barça's 3-0 victory over Lyon really tells us about the team many feel is a favorite for a trip to the finals. With Eto'o out to injury, Barça was able to accommodate all of its available all-work attackers within a more traditional 4-3-3, but the play still appeared stilted. Henry's first goal with his new side was more happenstance than skill, and he still looks completely out of place having to play up front with players who are actually better than him. The passing is well below what one would expect of a team with that much class on display, and one wonders if there will be too much talent overlap — not to mention too few places on the field for everyone to play within a reasonable structure — once Eto'o's available for play again. In the spirit of making predictions one might regret later, I'll go ahead and say that Barça's run will be a lot shorter than most expect this season.

Tomorrow: Inter loses! Who can't be happy about that?

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