"Bye to Babel": Ajax youngster makes Liverpool switch
12 July: What is more important? The fact that Ajax will
receive 17 million euros for a player, in what is the second
biggest transfer ever of a player from the
club's youth system (only topped by Frank de Boer's to
Barcelona)? Or the fact that Ajax have lost one of their most
talented youngsters, who has decided to leave the club
before he's fully matured as a footballer? A little
bit of both, probably. Mixed feelings all around: Ryan Babel
has left Ajax and joined Liverpool FC.
"Ajax was always the club of my heart and I surely wanted to
stay for another season," explained Babel. "But at some point I
would have wanted to make a step like this anyway. Could have
been next season. Or the season after that. But the chance was
offered to me now - and then it's simple."
Ryan Babel (born Amsterdam, 19 December 1986) is a
real Amsterdammer and a real Ajacied, who
started to play for the club in the D1 youth team (for eight
and nine year-olds). He developed into one of the most highly
regarded gems of the Ajax youth. A great career seemed to be
ahead for the striker oft compared to the young Patrick
Kluivert.
Ryan Babel was one the youngest ever youth players to make
his Ajax-1 début (on 01 February 2004 against ADO Den
Haag), although this was a bit of an 'emergency': all other
strikers were injured. It would remain Babel's only first team
appearance until 20 November 2004, when he was given the
nod for the away game at De Graafschap and immediately
scored his first Ajax-1 goal. Babel's career had now
really taken off. He became a first team regular (in
his first weeks the average number of minutes he required to
score a goal was the lowest in the history of
the Eredivisie), got to make his début for the
Dutch national team on
27 March 2005 - and graced
his Oranje début with a goal, too. Ajax
extended and improved his youth contract until 30 June
2008 that summer: on 07 July, to be precise.
Babel's first full season as a fully-fledged member of the
Ajax-1 squad (the 2005-2006 campaign) was not an easy one:
Babel struggled a bit and did not score as easily,
as Angelos Charisteas and later Klaas-Jan Huntelaar were
ahead of him in the pecking order of centre
forwards. Babel was told that he had to focus on the
position of left forward, but head-coach Danny Blind usually
preferred Markus Rosenberg on that position. The purchase
of AZ's Kenneth Perez (a right-footed 'number 11', just like
Babel) in the first months of 2006 seemed a serious threat to
Babel's position at the club, but the 2006-2007 season (under
head-coach Henk ten Cate) was the season of Babel's big break
in Ajax's first team.
As you'd expect Babel was linked to several major clubs from
the English Premiership, notably Newcastle United,
Arsenal, Manchester United and Liverpool, especially when the
Dutch U-21 team clinched the European title this summer, with
Babel as one of their most praised star players. The player had
signed another contract extension (until 30 June 2010) in
February 2007, but when it started to become clear that
Liverpool were actually willing to pay 15 million euros or more
for the 20 year-old, everything changed. It is, and always will
be, hard for a club like Ajax to turn down offers like
that.
After 111 official appearances and 24 goals for Ajax
(but only one real season as a starter) Ryan
Babel has committed to 'The Reds' from Anfield Road for five
seasons. As an Ajacied, he won 14 caps (4 goals) for The
Netherlands. Ajax have now sold three of the players who
normally occupied the wings of Ajax-1 (Tom De Mul, Kenneth
Perez and Ryan Babel), receiving somewhere between 20 and 25
million euros. You'd think that a major purchase is
now a matter of time... (MP)
Sources: Ajax.nl, UEFA.com
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