The numbers are brutal enough. A 1-2 home defeat to FC Twente, fourth place gone, and suddenly Ajax are looking down the VriendenLoterij Eredivisie table instead of up it. What once felt unthinkable is now a live scenario: the Amsterdam giants tumbling to seventh and missing out on European football altogether.
This is not a hypothetical cooked up for clicks. It’s on the fixture list.
Twente blow and a brutal run-in
Saturday’s loss to Twente at the Johan Cruijff ArenA did more than sting the pride. It reshaped the table. Twente leapfrogged Ajax into fourth, the position that carries a Europa League ticket. Ajax are stuck on 48 points, two behind the Tukkers, and the calendar offers no comfort.
Heracles Almelo away. NAC Breda away. Then a closing trilogy that would test any side in form, never mind one as fragile as this Ajax: PSV, FC Utrecht and sc Heerenveen.
PSV are champions and ruthless front-runners. Utrecht and Heerenveen are fighting for their own European lifeline through the play-offs. Every opponent has something sharp to play for. There are no dead rubbers here, only traps.
Utrecht: Ajax’s modern bogey team
Ninth-placed Utrecht are lurking, one point behind Sparta Rotterdam, who currently hold the final play-off spot on 41 points. That alone makes them dangerous. Their recent record against Ajax turns them into something worse.
Ajax have beaten Utrecht just once in their last five meetings. One win in five, against a side that relishes these occasions and has turned awkwardness into a habit.
Ron Jans has Utrecht ticking. They have lost only two of their last ten league games, and even those defeats came with a fight: 4-3 against PSV, 1-0 against Feyenoord. No collapses, no rollovers. A team that stays in matches, that makes you earn every metre.
For an Ajax side already wobbling, Utrecht at full tilt is not a fixture. It’s a warning.
Heerenveen closing in
Then there is Heerenveen, quietly building momentum in the north. Unbeaten in five, seventh in the table, just four points behind Ajax. The gap is small enough to vanish in a bad week.
Earlier this season, Óscar García’s Ajax failed to beat the Frisians at home, held to a 1-1 draw at the Johan Cruijff ArenA. That was in a different phase of the campaign, but the pattern is familiar: Ajax dominating on paper, Heerenveen taking a chunk out of them on the pitch.
Now the rematch comes with the stakes cranked up. The final round. Abe Lenstra Stadium. Heerenveen with the chance not just to secure their own position, but to drag Ajax down into the play-offs or worse.
If the table tightens and the nerves fray, that last day in Heerenveen could decide whether Ajax still have a European passport or are left queuing at the border.
The play-off trap and the cup wildcard
Drop into the play-offs and Ajax’s fate no longer sits entirely in their own hands. The club would then be watching the KNVB Cup final with unusual intensity.
On Sunday 19 April, NEC meet AZ. The stakes are clear: the winner goes straight into the Europa League. AZ currently sit sixth in the league and, with a cup win, could sidestep the play-offs entirely.
That twist matters in Amsterdam. If AZ lift the cup, it removes one heavyweight from the play-off equation. Given Ajax’s recent struggles against the Alkmaar side – their last victory over AZ came back in 2021 – that scenario might quietly suit them.
But banking on others to clear your path is not the Ajax way. Or at least, it never used to be.
A giant on the brink
So here they are. Ajax, 48 points, a punishing run-in, direct rivals in form, and the very real prospect of sliding to seventh in a league they once dominated by muscle memory.
The numbers say it can happen. The fixtures say it might.
The only question left is whether this team still has the authority, and the nerve, to stop the fall before Europe disappears from view.
