Ajax Faces Unthinkable Threat: Europe Slipping Away
The numbers are brutal in their simplicity. Ajax 1, FC Twente 2. Fourth place gone. Europe no longer a given, but a question.
Saturday’s defeat in Amsterdam did more than hand FC Twente three points. It flipped the VriendenLoterij Eredivisie table on its head for Ajax, pushing the Tukkers into fourth place and the Europa League ticket that comes with it. Ajax, on 48 points, now trail Twente by two – and the run-in offers no comfort.
This is not the usual late-season script in Amsterdam. This is a club staring at the possibility of finishing as low as seventh and missing out on European football altogether.
A heavy defeat, a heavier schedule
Losing at home to a direct rival always hurts. Losing in a season where every point feels like a bandage on a deep wound hurts even more. Ajax had the chance to keep Twente behind them. They failed. Twente stepped over them and now control their own path to Europe.
Ajax’s remaining fixtures read like a trap laid in stages.
First, two away trips: Heracles Almelo and NAC Breda. On paper, those are the “must-win” games that keep a season alive. In reality, this Ajax side has given up the right to talk about routine victories. Every away day carries risk, every dropped point could prove fatal.
Then comes the real storm: PSV, FC Utrecht, sc Heerenveen. Three matches, three sides with something very real to play for.
PSV are champions. They will not be in a charitable mood. Utrecht and Heerenveen? They are circling the European play-off spots, and Ajax are no longer the untouchable giant they once were.
Utrecht: the bogey team waiting in the run-in
Utrecht sit ninth, just one point behind Sparta Rotterdam, who currently occupy the final European play-off place with 41 points. That alone makes Utrecht dangerous. The numbers against Ajax make them even more so.
Ron Jans’s team have become a problem Ajax cannot shake. One win in the last five meetings – that is Ajax’s meagre return against Utrecht. The pattern is no coincidence anymore; it is a trend.
Utrecht’s form only sharpens the threat. Two defeats in their last ten league matches, both by the narrowest of margins and against the league’s elite: 4-3 against PSV, 0-1 against Feyenoord. They are not just chasing a play-off spot. They are playing well enough to take it from anyone, including Ajax.
For a side already wobbling, that fixture looms large. Drop points there, and Ajax’s grip on Europe could snap.
Heerenveen closing in
As if Utrecht were not enough, Heerenveen are coming from the other side of the table. The Frisian club sit seventh, only four points behind Ajax, and they are moving in the right direction.
Unbeaten in five league matches, Heerenveen have found rhythm at exactly the moment Ajax have lost theirs. The last time the two sides met, at the Johan Cruijff ArenA, Ajax could not break them. It ended 1-1, another match that fed the feeling that this team no longer imposes itself at will.
Now, the rematch in the final round of the season at the Abe Lenstra Stadion carries a sharper edge. Heerenveen could do more than frustrate Ajax this time. They could finish the job.
If results go against them in the weeks before, Ajax could walk into that stadium with their European place hanging by a thread – or already gone. Heerenveen, chasing their own dream, would not hesitate to push them into the play-offs or worse.
The play-off safety net that might not be safe
Drop into the play-offs, and Ajax’s season becomes a gamble they never wanted to play. The club that once treated the group stage of European competition as a bare minimum might find itself fighting just to get a ticket to the qualifiers.
In that scenario, all eyes turn to the cup final on Sunday 19 April. NEC meet AZ, with the stakes stretching far beyond Nijmegen and Alkmaar. The cup winner goes straight into the Europa League.
For AZ, currently sixth in the league, a victory would be a shortcut past the play-offs. For Ajax, it could be an indirect lifeline. If AZ secure Europe through the cup, it reshapes the play-off picture and could open a path that looks slightly less treacherous.
Recent history in the North Holland derby, though, offers another uncomfortable reminder. Ajax have not beaten AZ since 2021. Even when the permutations fall kindly on paper, nothing feels guaranteed anymore.
A giant on the brink
So here Ajax stand. Two points off fourth, yet only four clear of seventh. A brutal schedule, awkward opponents, and a table that no longer bends to their will.
The club that once measured seasons in titles and deep European runs is now staring at a different kind of question: not how far they can go in Europe, but whether they will be there at all.
The margin for error is gone. One more slip, one more bad week, and the unthinkable may become their new reality.
