Dazzmondo
Full Member
- Joined
- Jul 13, 2013
- Messages
- 10,221
All of them are better because of the coaching they received from ETH. Hence my question. Haller, Blind and Tadic were all deemed PL flops when they joined Ajax.
Even De Jong, Ziyech, De Ligt, Donny have all failed to recapture the form they had at Ajax and that landed their big money moves.
Ability wise, not a single Ajax player is on par with their Benfica counterparts. Despite that Benfica camped in their 18 yard box for 75% of the tie.
That right there clearly shows who they thought were the better coached team.
I can make this argument about any player in the world. Salah is only better than Ryan Fraser because he's playing under one of the 2 best managers in the world in Klopp. He was a complete flop at Chelsea therefore he's actually rubbish. Tadic in particular actually did show a lot of ability at times for Southampton (8 league goals and 13 league assists in 15/16 season). Haller wasn't very good for West Ham but he scored 20 goals for Frankfurt the season prior to joining. Blind certainly wasn't the only player to flop at Utd post-SAF, world class players like Sanchez, di Maria, Schweinsteiger, Falcao all failed here too for various reasons. Blind probably wasn't helped by the amount of time he spent injured for Utd either. I disagree with you massively about the idea that not a single Ajax player is on par with the Benfica players. There are top teams looking to sign the likes of Gravenberch, Mazraoui and Antony. If they really thought these players were only doing well because of Ajax's system they wouldn't be trying to sign them. The only Benfica players I've seen linked with big clubs are Nunez and Rafa Silva (who bizarrely you didn't even mention, apparently Adel Taarabt is better )