The table does not lie, but for Ajax it still feels surreal.
A 1-2 home defeat to FC Twente last weekend did more than sting the pride of a restless Johan Cruijff ArenA. It knocked Ajax out of the top four and handed fourth place – and with it a Europa League ticket – to the Tukkers. Suddenly, the most decorated club in the Netherlands is glancing nervously over its shoulder rather than up the table.
Twente now sit fourth, Ajax fifth. The gap? Just two points. The problem for Ajax is not the maths. It’s the calendar.
A run-in loaded with traps
Ajax are on 48 points, chasing Twente, but their remaining fixtures are anything but forgiving. Two away games first: Heracles Almelo and NAC Breda. On paper, winnable. In the current climate, nothing about Ajax is straightforward.
Then comes the real storm.
PSV at home. FC Utrecht. sc Heerenveen. Three clubs with their own agendas, none of them inclined to offer Ajax a soft landing. PSV are national champions and will not treat a trip to Amsterdam as a lap of honour. Utrecht and Heerenveen are locked in a dogfight for the European play-off spots and will see Ajax as both obstacle and opportunity.
Utrecht sit ninth, one point behind Sparta Rotterdam, who currently occupy the final play-off place with 41 points. They are not just chasing; they are charging. Ron Jans has turned Utrecht into a side nobody enjoys facing, least of all Ajax.
The numbers tell the story. Ajax have beaten Utrecht only once in their last five meetings. Utrecht, meanwhile, have lost just two of their last ten league matches – and those defeats came by a single goal against PSV (4-3) and Feyenoord (0-1). This is not a mid-table side drifting to the beach. This is a team that smells blood.
Heerenveen lurking, ready to pounce
Heerenveen are another shadow on the horizon. The Frisians are unbeaten in five league matches and currently sit seventh, four points behind Ajax. That margin can vanish quickly if Ajax stumble again.
Earlier this season, Óscar García’s side failed to beat Heerenveen at home, drawing 1-1 at the Johan Cruijff ArenA. That was a warning. The return fixture is something else entirely: the final day of the season, at the Abe Lenstra Stadium, with potentially everything on the line.
Heerenveen could do more than just spoil Ajax’s afternoon. They could push them down into the play-offs or even out of Europe altogether. For a club that measures itself in Champions League nights, the prospect of scrapping for a ticket to the Conference League – or missing out completely – borders on humiliation.
Yet that is exactly where the trajectory points. One more slip, one more flat performance, and seventh place stops being a wild prediction and starts looking like a logical outcome.
A lifeline from the cup?
If Ajax do fall into the play-offs, their gaze will inevitably drift to Rotterdam on Sunday 19 April, where the KNVB Beker final offers a different kind of lifeline. NEC meet AZ, currently sixth in the league, with a direct Europa League place on the line.
The equation is simple. The cup winner goes straight into the Europa League. If AZ win it, they step out of the play-off traffic jam entirely. That would remove a powerful rival from Ajax’s potential route through the back door.
Given recent North Holland derbies, Ajax might not mind seeing AZ occupied elsewhere. They have not beaten the Alkmaar club since 2021, a statistic that underlines just how far the traditional hierarchy has shifted.
So Ajax find themselves in a position that would have sounded absurd not long ago: hoping other clubs do them favours, hoping a rival wins a cup final, hoping a run-in full of landmines does not end in a season without European football.
The table is tight. The schedule is brutal. The margin for error has vanished.
Will Ajax still be a European club when the dust settles, or will this be remembered as the year the giants finally crashed to earth?
