The Club World Cup final is Real Madrid's last match before the winter break. After the Club World Cup, the team held a celebration banquet and a Christmas banquet in the honor room of Bernabeu, and the whole team began to enter the Christmas holiday.

There were no major events in 2017, so the Christmas holiday was relatively long, but Real Madrid would still start training after Christmas. Moreover, many players, including Yang Yang, conducted physical intensive training early and entered the winter break period to adjust in advance, so the coaching staff also had high requirements for players' holidays.

With the experience of last season, the team has more experience in handling this season, and the arrangements given by the coaching staff are more targeted.

At the very least, the team is doing its best to ensure the players' self-discipline and condition.

Before Christmas, Yang Yang got a week's holiday. He could relax well. He just needed to maintain his condition and adjust his health during this period. He decided to take his wife and children to the warmer south.

David Silva invited him to take a vacation to the Canary Islands. Suarez, Marcelo and others were all going with their families. Yang Yang also decided to go with him. His impression of the Canary Islands was still a few years ago, but it was still very good to go there for the winter.

However, before heading south, Yang Yang walked north and flew to Amsterdam.

...

The situation in the Eredivisie this season is a bit shocking.

Eindhoven, who performed well last season, finally experienced turmoil after being poached by many giant teams. He is currently only ranked third in the Dutch Eredivisie, and has scored 34 points in the seventeen rounds of the league, with a record of nine wins, seven draws and one loss, which makes people clearly see the problems of this team.

Eindhoven conceded only eight goals in the seventeen rounds, and his defense was the best in the Eredivisie, but he only scored twenty-five goals. His offense was even ranked in the middle and lower reaches of the Eredivisie. It can be seen that this team's offense is very problematic.

Ajax has scored 37 points and is ranked second in the Eredivisie standings, with 11 wins, four draws and two losses, and 35 goals and thirteen goals. Such a report card cannot be considered very good, and it is even worse than last season, because the team won 13 wins, two draws and two losses in the first half of last season, and got 41 points.

This comparison is somewhat unfair. After all, the turnover of personnel, especially the departure of players such as Milik, has indeed had an impact on Ajax, but it is undeniable that Pete Boss' coaching can only be considered a matter of moderation.

There is a saying that only when the matchup is equally matched or challenging the strong can we truly test a team's technical and tactical level. This season's performance in the strong dialogue can only be said to be average.

The Champions League playoffs were 1-1 at home and 1-4 away to Rostov. Especially the away game, this defeat really caused Ajax to suffer heavy losses, because if he could enter the Champions League group stage, Ajax would get at least 20 million euros, but unfortunately, the team stopped on the periphery.

This is cheaper for Eindhoven, the mortal enemy, because they won the Eredivisie in the Champions League.

The Champions League was hit, and Ajax moved to the UEFA Cup. He won four wins and two draws in the group stage and remained unbeaten. His performance was pretty good. But it should be noted that Ajax's group stage opponents are basically not strong. The most troublesome opponent is Vigo Celta of La Liga, but this team performed poorly this season and is currently only ranked 13th in La Liga.

But no matter what, at least Ajax's performance is quite stable.

Of course, although Peter Boss has a fair coaching performance, he spared no effort to train and promote young players.

At present, young players in the team can basically get a lot of opportunities. Young players of Cruivet Jr., van der Beck, de Jong, and De Rigt have been promoted to the first team one after another and have also gained opportunities one after another. The newly joined Ndongbele has also made its mark in the new season. Brazil's left-back Joe and local midfielder Rosario who transferred from Almere have also performed well, which are worthy of recognition.

In terms of technical and tactical system, Pete Boss solved some problems that Debord had in the later stages, such as frontcourt offense and midfield problems, but still failed to sort them out. Klassen continued his wonderful performance at the beginning of the season and became the best player in Ajax and even the entire Eredivisie.

Captain Ajax, who is 24 years old, has successfully attracted the attention of four major league teams including Naples and Frankfurt with his outstanding performance this season. The one who is most interested in him is Everton, coached by former Ajax coach Ronald Koeman.

Ajax coach DeBol, who left after the end of last season, almost introduced Clarson after coaching Inter Milan, but Ajax retained the midfielder. By November, DeBol was fired by Inter Milan, and his intention to introduce Clarson was left alone.

But during this winter break, there are many teams that are ready to play against Captain Ajax. This time, Yang Yang personally rushed to Amsterdam. The most important task is to determine the team's transfer during the winter break.

Pete Boss made it clear that he would keep Klasson because he is the core midfielder of the team.

In terms of finance, Ajax earned 50 million euros in selling people this summer, and the finances are quite abundant, so there is no need to sell people during the winter break. Whether it is the management or the coaching staff, they are more inclined to retain Klassen.

Of course, the most important thing at the moment is the players' own opinions, and Pete Boss said he could convince Clarson.

But the crux of Ajax remains unchanged.

…………

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"Peter Boss has indeed brought about a lot of changes. He focuses on actively pressing and oppressing opponents, but the problem is that our defense line lacks strong points, which can easily expose the shortcomings of our defense line, especially when some strength is comparable or challenging strong teams, this problem is particularly serious."

Van Gaal has a very clear understanding of the current situation of the team and also knows where the problem lies.

"If you don't talk about anything else, just the game against Vigo Celta at home was almost overturned. We couldn't catch it for a long time, and we scored a goal in the last stage of the first half, and scored two goals in three minutes in the second half, leading three to zero. But after 75 minutes, our physical fitness began to be insufficient, and we were scored two goals in a row by our opponents, and finally we were hit."

Speaking of that game, Van Gaal was still shocked.

Van der Sar, Edgar Davis, Orvemas and others are all like this, which shows that the game was extremely dangerous.

If that battle is not won, Ajax's group title will be out of the blue.

"Then let's start introducing high-level young defenders." Yang Yang said naturally.

"It's been inspecting and following." Edgar Davis shook his head and sighed, "But you know, the value of players in European football is generally soaring now. There are news that many teams are planning a big transfer, and the European transfer market will be even more crazy next summer."

Ajax's management team was also worried.

Many people think that the soaring transfer fees affect wealthy families or European first-tier teams, but in fact, under the layers of transmission, teams in mid- and lower-level leagues with weaker resistance often live more difficult.

Let me put it this way, for the middle and upper-level teams in the four major leagues, it is at best a problem of eating or drinking porridge, but for Ajax, he will be in debt if he is not careful, and may even be involved in the debt crisis and will be unable to extricate himself.

"Joe Ge is really good. We will increase our cultivation and reuse of him in the second half of the season. There is also youth team teenager De Rigt. We all are very optimistic about him. If he can gain a foothold in the first team with his performance, he should be able to improve the defense line. There is also the midfielder. Ndongbele is indeed quite good. Young players such as van der Beck and De Jong are also worth looking forward to, but these will take time." Borgkamp analyzed that he is an assistant coach of the first team, but also a member of the technical team.

The management knows the abilities and potential of several young players of Ajax, but it is not a simple matter to promote young players in a team. The players also need to rely on the game to prove and show themselves.

If a player does not gain the trust of the locker room and does not have the ability to make his teammates believe, even if he is arranged on the court and cannot gain the trust and pass of his teammates, what can he do?

"The young players nowadays are too expensive, and they always cost over one million, or even several million euros. We can't afford to bet, at least we can't afford to bet now." Van Gaal was also under a lot of pressure.

"Peter Boss can maintain the current situation, but he can't bring any surprises. We can only take one step at a time and help him slowly sort out the problems that exist in the team, but I'm not optimistic that he can bring transformation to the team."

As a world-renowned coach with rich experience, Van Gaal knew very well that what Ajax now needs is transformation.

Although transformation comes from the accumulation of quantitative change, head coaches who can bring transformation to the team often have their own special features, but he cannot see these things in Pete Boss.

No successful head coach is simple, such as Guardiola and Mourinho, or Zidane, who have become famous in the last two seasons. They all have their own specialties or their own uniqueness.

Without these, what can I use to transform the team?

What Pete Boss brings to Ajax is more quantitative change, but he cannot bring transformation to the team.

Such quantitative change is of little use for Ajax, because once the players are trained, they will be poached immediately after turning around and the personnel are lost. Ajax's combat effectiveness is greatly affected, and the team's performance has since been slumped.

Therefore, Ajax now has no way to pursue more, nor can he introduce players that other strong teams like. He can only continue to move forward and wait patiently on this road that seems correct but doesn’t know how long it will take to go.

Van Gaal had a vague feeling, "We are starting to increase our efforts to train young players this season. According to the current situation, this season and next season are all in pain. If Pete Boss still can't bring changes to the team next season, then we will change the coach."

"According to the rules, two years later, our young players are about to emerge and shine. They need an excellent leader to lead them and lead Ajax to complete their transformation."
Chapter completed!