UEFA Cup: Dinamo Zagreb await in first round
31 August: Another season in the UEFA Cup,
another handful of encounters with the IK Starts and Zulte
Waregems of this world? Think again! Ajax will be
seriously tested in the first round, as they were paired with
Croatian giants NK Dinamo Zagreb in Monaco today. Almost
everybody in Amsterdam seems convinced that Dinamo
Zagreb will be a tougher nut to crack than Slavia
Prague. We will see, on Thursday 20 September in the Croatian
capital, and on Thursday 04 October in that of The
Netherlands.
A supporters' poll on the Ajax Netwerk website sums it all
up: only 7.7% is convinced that Ajax will advance to
the group stage. No less than 56% believes that Ajax's first
round elimination from the UEFA Cup will turn
Ajax's European campaign into the ultimate nightmare. Ajax
supporters, this pessimistic...? It is highly unusual,
but it says everything about the pain and frustration of the
Champions League elimination at the hands of Slavia Prague,
which has not only hit the team like a
hammer, but the fans, too. Their hope, their pride, their
belief in the future (let alone the present) of Ajax has
sustained major damage... again. The club acknowledge this
and announced, almost immediately after the draw, that season
ticket holders can attend the home leg, on 04
October, for free.
After the 'pre-draw' there were five unseeded teams
Ajax could face: Hammarby (Sweden), Lokomotiv Sofia
(Bulgaria), Mlada Boleslav (Czech Republic), Larissa (Greece)
and Dinamo Zagreb. Ajax coach Henk ten Cate: "In my opinion
Dinamo Zagreb are the strongest out of those five. The quality
level of Croatian football is quite high: Croatian teams
normally have skill, and they can be ruthless, too. I can't say
much about Dinamo's specific qualities right now. We will have
to watch a few videos and attend a few of their games. Yet, I
feel that it should be possible for us to qualify for the group
stage."
The Club
Nogometni Klub Dinamo Zagreb was founded on 09 June
1945, almost immediately after World War Two and the rise to
power of the Communist Party of Yugoslavija. Three of the
most popular old football clubs from Zagreb
(HAŠK, Graðanski and Concordia) were forced into a
merger by the party to become a new, municipal football club.
The newly formed club played at the home ground of HAŠK,
but most of the players came from Graðanski. NK Dinamo also
adopted the colours of the latter club, to
become known as the 'Blues' of Zagreb.
NK Dinamo developed into a dominant force in Yugoslavijan
football, winning the national title four times, the
Yugoslavijan Cup seven times and making an impact in Europe in
the 1960s: NK Dinamo Zagreb made it to the final of the
Inter-Cities Fairs' Cup (the trophy that is now the UEFA
Cup) in 1963. Valencia CF proved too strong in the two-legged
final (1-4 on aggregate), but four years later, in
1967, the same trophy could be lifted after a 2-0
triumph on aggregate over Leeds United. It still stands as the
most glorious moment in the club's 62 year history.
When Yugoslavija disintegrated in the early 1990s and
Croatia became an independent republic, the
club controversially decided to get rid of its 'communist'
name and continue as HAŠK-Graðanski as of
1992. The new name proved to be a highly
unfortunate symbiosis of the names of two former rivals,
and didn't last long: a second name change followed in
1993, this time into Croatia Zagreb. The club's most
fanatical fans, known as the Bad Blue Boys, never accepted
these name changes: to them, Dinamo is the club's 'Holy
Name' and they have always used it in their chants
and on banners, even if it led to violence from the Croatian
police, who regarded the use of the name Dinamo as communist
propaganda.
Much to the fans' delight the club took its original name
back on 14 February 2000. By that time, the club had developed
into Croatia's number one powerhouse in football. Out of 16
league titles in Croatia's Prva HNL since
1992, no less than nine were claimed by Dinamo Zagreb
(Hajduk Split follow with six league championships). The
Dinamo trophy cabinet also features eight Croatian Cups
and seven Croatian Super Cups. As for this season? There's
still a long way to go, of course, but Dinamo
Zagreb are having a splendid start in the Prva
HNL: they won their first six league games and
are top of the table.
NK Dinamo Zagreb failed to make it into the Champions
League, but they made much more of an impression in the third
qualifying round than Ajax did. The Croatians suffered a rather
unfortunate
2-1 defeat in Werder Bremen's Weser
Stadium. The Germans were once again
pushed all the way in Zagreb, where Dinamo equalized twice
and kept fighting for a triumph until Diego's penalty kick made
it 2-3 in the 70th minute: 5-3 on aggregate.
More details on Dinamo's history can be found on the history
pages of the comprehensive English version of www.nk-dinamo.hr, the club's
official website.
The Roster
Followers of the Dutch Eredivisie may remember the name
of Dinamo Zagreb's German goalkeeper, Georg Koch, who briefly
was on PSV's payrole in 1997. He is one out of six foreigners
in the squad of coach Branko Ivankovic. Dinamo have three
Brazilians (Etto and Carlos in defense and Sammir in
midfield) and two Africans (Cameroon's Mathias Chago in
midfield and newcomer Did'dy Guela from Ivory Coast
upfront).
The team's two most noteworthy midfield stars,
however, are Croatians: Ognjen Vukejovic, scorer of one of
Dinamo's goals against Werder, and team captain and 'number 10'
Luka Modric. Did'dy Guela's partner upfront is normally Bosko
Balaban, a born Croatian who returned to his fatherland from
Club Brugge this summer. But there are more options upfront:
Tomo Sokota (of FC Porto and Benfica fame) and Croatian
international Josip Tadic are also available.
View the first squad of NK Dinamo Zagreb on their official
website.
The Stadium
The home ground of NK Dinamo Zagreb was named after the
north-eastern suburb of Maksimir, in which it is situated.
Maksimir Stadium is an all-seater and currently Croatia's
largest football ground, with a capacity of 36,452,
just over a thousand more than Split's Poljud Stadium. If
Ajax ever return to the Maksimir after 20 September
2007 the ground will have undergone some spectacular changes: a
major renovation is scheduled for January 2008. If everything
goes according to schedule the ground will have some 52,000
seats by 2010.
The most fanatical Dinamo supporters, the notoriously loud
Bad Blue Boys, occupy the
North Stand of the ground.
Ajax versus Croation opposition
Ajax and Dinamo Zagreb met once before in official UEFA
competition. This was in the 'Croatia Zagreb era', back in
1998. In the group stage of the Champions League, on 16
September 1998, Morten Olsen's Ajax were the dominant side
in a dull encounter at the Maksimir, but had to settle for a
0-0 draw. Two months later, on 25 November, the
'team formerly known as Dinamo' booked a surprising and
shocking 0-1 win at the Amsterdam ArenA. It marked the end of
Ajax's European campaign: it was the last group game and thanks
to their unexpected win in Amsterdam Croatia
Zagreb and Ajax finished with seven points.
Zagreb advanced, based on head-to-head result. Ajax
finished third crashed out of Europe. Today's
'corridor' into the UEFA Cup had not been invented
yet.
Ajax's only ever win over Dinamo Zagreb was booked in a
friendly in Amsterdam, on 14 February 1971: 1-0. The second of
Ajax's two friendlies against Dinamo was played in February
1977, as part of a friendly tournament in Zagreb. The
trophy at stake was the Coppa Marjan and Dinamo Zagreb
painfully hammered Ajax on 17 February: 4-0. The second
game of the mini-tournament was played the next day,
against Hajduk Split. Ajax lost again: 1-0.
Hajduk Split are the only other club from Croatia that Ajax
ever faced in UEFA competition. The first time was in September
1993, when Hajduk Split came out of the bowl as Ajax's
opponent in the first round of the European Cup Winners'
Cup. Yugoslavija was falling apart and the atrocities
of the civil war in Bosnia were so frighteningly close to
Split, that the UEFA decided that the hame had to be played in
Zagreb. The plane tickets were already booked when an
appartment block in Zagreb was hit by a missile, so
that Hajduk Split and Ajax ended up playing their game of
football in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Ajax lost (1-0), but the
return leg at the Olympic Stadium was a walk-over: 6-0,
courtesy of Ronald de Boer, Jari Litmanen, Frank de Boer,
Stefan Pettersson and a brace from... Edgar Davids.
Less than two years later, in the Champions League quarter
final of March 1995, the country once known as
Yugoslavija was still ravaged by war, but the city of Split was
no longer in the front line, so that Hajduk Split could
receive Ajax at their own Poljud Stadium on 01 March. It
was one of the more boring matches of Ajax's 1994-1995
Champions League campaign: the Amsterdammers were below par,
but had enough control to keep a clean sheet in Split (0-0) and
finish the job at the Olympic Stadium on 15 March. Nwankwo Kanu
and Frank de Boer (2x) translated Ajax's superiority to
the score-board: 3-0.
Hajduk Split and Ajax also met in three friendlies
and Hajduk won all three of 'em: 3-0 on 09 April
1974, 1-0 in February 1977 (as mentioned above) and 4-2 on 28
January 1979.
Ajax never won on Croatian soil, lost their only official
UEFA encounter with Dinamo Zagreb 1-0 on aggregate and booked
their only win over the 'Blues' from Zagreb in a
friendly... The historic facts suggest that it's
not going to be easy, and the present situation at the ArenA
will not exactly make the average Ajax fan more
optimistic. One thing is for sure: this clash between two
former winners of the UEFA Cup surely is one to look forward
to. (MP)
Sources: UEFA.com, NK-Dinamo.hr, Wikipedia
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