September 25, Amsterdam, Netherlands.

The seventh round of the Eredivisie is being held in the Amsterdam Stadium in Ajax, with Ajax playing against Zwolle at home.

The strength gap between the two teams is obvious. Ajax is currently ranked third in the Eredivisie, behind Feyenoord and Eindhoven, while Zwolle is the last in points and ranks eighteenth in the Eredivisie.

At home, Ajax head coach Pete Boss lined up a 433 formation, the front court was lined up a trident offensive combination of Yunis, Zhang Yuning and Neres, while Schon dragged behind in the midfield, and Classen and Ziyech suddenly stepped forward.

Such a midfield and frontcourt lineup is full of attack power, gathering the strongest attack lineup of Ajax at present.

Chinese young player Zhang Yuning performed well in the Dutch Eredivisie this season, and the consecutive goals in the World Cup qualifiers allowed him to temporarily stabilize his first-team position in Ajax. However, after returning from Asia's King of Asia, he served as a substitute for three consecutive games. Then he played for an hour in the Dutch Cup against William II. The team won five to zero, but Zhang Yuning failed to score.

In this game against Zwolle, he once again appeared on the lineup.

Not known to players and fans, in the VIP box at the Amsterdam Stadium, Gao Han also watched the game on the spot, accompanied by Sergio Garcia and Shaumu. In addition to Van der Sar and other core Ajax executives, Gao Han and Zhang Yuning's agent Jorge Mendes, as well as Ajax legend Van Gaal.

Among them, Van Gaal was specially invited by Gao Han.

"We are still very satisfied with Zhang Yuning's growth and progress, but we are still relatively young and lack the experience of self-adjustment, so we traveled to Asia and played in the World Cup qualifiers. The condition of returning was affected by some, but the adjustment is currently good."

Van der Sar took the initiative to explain to Gao Han the current problems Zhang Yuning encountered in the team.

Even though he is promoted to senior Ajax, Van der Sar still respects Gao Han's former mentor.

"How is the training?" Gao Han asked with concern.

"The attitude is good and the body is recovering well. I believe we can adjust it quickly." Van der Sar smiled slightly, "In addition, the team has also begun to tailor-made training plans for him, mainly the last shot and the adjustment before the shot. We think this can better improve his competitiveness."

Gao Han nodded. This treatment is only available for players who are focused on cultivating in the team, such as the former new star players such as Ibrahimovic, Van der Fat, Sneider, and from the fact that Ajax can focus on cultivating, it is not difficult to see Ajax attaches importance to Zhang Yuning.

This is not only Gao Han’s strong recommendation and Mendes’ operation, but of course, Zhang Yuning’s own strength is also indispensable.

Many people have a misunderstanding about Ajax, thinking that the Eredivisie giants are known for their youth training. This can be said to be true, but not right. Ajax is best at carving semi-finished products.

If you carefully study Ajax's past youth training output, it is not difficult to find that what they like most is to search for young semi-finished products from the Netherlands or around the world. These young players with potential have the foundation to become professional players, while Ajax is responsible for improving them in the final stage and selling them at a high price.

Ibrahimovic, Hunteral, Suarez... Many stars have walked out of Ajax in this way.

The entire training process is an industrial chain. Players are just a processed product on the chain. They are cruel and may even be inhumane to survive the fittest. But this is Ajax's way of survival in European football and cannot tolerate any kindness.

As early as when Gao Han suggested that Zhang Yuning join Ajax, he had already explained all the interests clearly, and he also made the final choice to join Ajax and accept this challenge.

For him, if he loses, he will be able to return to his original form. Even with this gilding from Ajax, his market will be bullish, but if he wins, it will soar to the sky.

…………

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Today's Ajax is no longer as beautiful as the early years.

A group of players led by Ibrahimovic, Van der Fat and Sneider represent the final glory of Ajax. At that time, there were foreign players like Ibrahimovic and outstanding local rookies like Van der Fat and Sneider, which created the strength of Ajax at that time.

But later Ajax fell year by year, and although players like Suarez and Hunteral were born, both in terms of performance and momentum, they were inferior to Feyenoord and Eindhoven. In addition, the turmoil in the club's management led to a great impact on the team's performance.

Until around 2010, the return of a group of legendary stars led by Cruyff, Debor and Van der Sar reshaped Ajax and ushered in four consecutive championships. However, at this time, Ajax could only show off his power in Dutch football.

This season, Ajax vigorously promoted the reform of youth. Among the eleven players on this game, nine of them were born in the 1990s and five of them were born in the 1995s. It is indeed a very young team.

Among this young team, Zhang Yuning in 1997 is undoubtedly the youngest.

However, Ajax did not start well in this game. Four minutes into the game, Zwolle was assisted by left winger Thomas to assist midfielder Brama to score a goal, scoring the away goal first.

Fortunately, four minutes later, Clarson took advantage of a corner kick opportunity to assist Colombia central defender Davinson Sanchez in 1996 to score a goal and successfully tie the score. Sanchez even scored twice in the 38th minute, Ziyech assisted and overtook the score.

Throughout the first half, Ajax suppressed Zwolle and frequently created opportunities. It was a pity that neither Zhang Yuning, nor Yunis and Neres in the frontcourt, ultimately failed to score goals and missed opportunities frequently.

This disappointed Gao Han in the box, but he also understood in his heart that Zhang Yuning was still young and lacked self-regulation ability in multi-line combat, which is what Buenaventura will deal with next.

"How is it? How does it feel?" Van der Sar asked with a smile.

Gao Han nodded, "It's very good, Clarson, Ziyech, Sanchez, Schön, all are very good. Neres in the frontcourt has great potential. Cultivating it well will definitely be another treasure."

Speaking of this, Gao Han turned his head and looked at Mendes who was sitting next to Van der Sa, but secretly raised his ears and eavesdropped on him, and said with a funny look: "If I guess correctly, the two players, Sanchez and Nerez, should have been introduced by Jorge, right?"

Van der Sar and Mendes were both stunned and then looked at each other and smiled.

"I just said, he is very cunning, how can he hide it from him?" Mendes laughed.

"This summer, Gazi transferred to Lille, and Jorge introduced us to Nerez. For this reason, we struggled to sign him from Sao Paulo. We all looked forward to him unanimously." Van der Sa nodded.

As the agency's business grew bigger and bigger, Mendes began to form his own scouting network channel. In addition, the rich experience accumulated over the past years has made him rarely explored and searched young players and rarely passed the appraisal of Gao Han's fire-eyed golden eyes, and it is generally conducted internal inspections of the company.

This is also a sign that the brokerage company is becoming mature, and Gao Han is also very welcome to it.

From the words, Gao Han can also understand that in Mendes and Ajax's cooperation this summer, Sanchez, Nerez and Zhang Yuning are probably tied together, which is also a normal situation in European football.

Thinking of this, Gao Han narrowed his eyes and moved his golden eyes, sweeping over Neres and Zhang Yuning who were walking down the court.

"From the performance in the first half, Nerez is a very smart player, which is also the characteristic of many Brazilian players recently. The world economy is globalized, professional football is also globalized, and Brazil's youth training is also improving in the wave of globalization. Many new generation players no longer handle the ball at will, but have become more reasonable."

Everyone nodded repeatedly when they heard this, which was indeed a trend.

For example, Jessus, who plays for Chinatown, has performed very well this season, but it does not belong to the very traditional Samba player traits, but it has a bit of European style.

Neres is a bit similar to Jessus and is about the same age, but overall, Jessus is better.

"He is smart enough and very calm. He rarely puts himself in an environment that is very uncomfortable and difficult to handle the ball, and knows how to cooperate with his teammates. However, even if his physical fitness is slightly poor, I think he should be properly strengthened, and his scoring ability should be appropriately improved. In less than three years, he will definitely achieve something."

Mendes and Van der Sar looked at each other and saw surprise in each other's eyes.

It is obvious that this is the first time Gao Han has watched Neres' game, but in the end, he only took half a game to figure out Neres' advantages and disadvantages so thoroughly, and even gave a development plan for the next three years.

Combined with Ajax's careful research and investigation results over the past few months, it was found that it was very close to what Gao Han said. The only difference was physical fitness. Ajax believed that there was no need to strengthen it.

But this was not Gao Han’s mistake, but Ajax’s tradition, and they did not attach great importance to physical fitness cultivation.

It was also at this moment that Van der Sar truly felt why Gao Han had the reputation of being a mentor in European football.

"Where is Zhang Yuning?" Mendes asked with concern.

He also knew Gao Han very well and knew that the purpose of his trip was Zhang Yuning, so he naturally knew how to borrow flowers to offer Buddha.

"At this age, many things have been fixed. I think Ajax's training direction is correct. Zhang Yuning should turn to the direction of tactical fulcrum and scorer to improve his strength of a goal kick, as well as the adjustment after stopping the ball, especially on his back, I still remember..."

Gao Han talked about the game he played against Iran at home. Once, Zhang Yuning stopped the ball on the left side of the penalty area and turned around and shot directly with his right foot. It was very exciting and almost scored a goal, which left a deep impression on Gao Han.

Ordinary fans must think that such a shot is normal, and occasionally Meng can be shot once, but Gao Han knows very well that this shot represents Zhang Yuning's future development trend.

Since you can no longer improve your basic skills and other aspects, you have to work hard to find a path that suits your development. Even if you become a role player, as long as you can tap your own potential, it is a good choice.

In this regard, Ajax proved that he had the strength to tap into young players.

After listening to Gao Han's introduction, Van der Sar immediately asked Gao Han for a video of Zhang Yuning's game in the World Cup qualifiers, saying that he would study it carefully for the technical department and formulate a better and more targeted intensive training plan for Zhang Yuning.

Van Gaal, who was sitting next to him, did not participate in what everyone was discussing.

Since leaving the coaching position, he has been unemployed at home, but has never left football.

But for the current Ajax, as a legendary figure in the past, he did not participate in any involvement, and even had no evaluation, because the current helmsman believes in Cruyff.

And everyone knows that he and Cruyff are famously rivals.

If he hadn't received Gao Han's invitation tonight, he wouldn't even set foot on the Amsterdam Stadium.
Chapter completed!