Daley Blind Reflects on Ajax's Renewed Spirit
Daley Blind walked back into Ajax and felt it straight away. The club he left behind in turbulent times no longer felt quite the same. In his eyes, that is exactly the point.
“Yes, it was different from how I had left it. That’s true,” the 36-year-old defender told Ziggo Sport after Ajax’s 1-4 win over FK Vojvodina in the Conference League qualifying round. Different, but in a way that gave him hope.
A new tone, a new wind
Blind has seen enough dressing rooms to recognise when something shifts. This time, he pinned it quickly on one man: coach Míchel.
“From the moment I walked in, the tone had already been set by the coach,” Blind said. You could hear the relief in the way he framed it. “There was a new wind blowing, there was a lot of positivity in the group.”
For a squad that has staggered through “difficult years,” as Blind put it, that matters as much as any tactical tweak. Ajax have been bruised. The fans have worn it. So have the players.
“You hear that from the lads as well,” he continued. “They have also been difficult years. For the fans. But also for the players themselves.”
That is where Blind kept returning: to the feeling rather than the formation. “That feeling of being a team, of unity, of confidence. Of positivity that goes hand in hand with victories. I think we have been doing well with that over the last two matches as well.”
Two games do not heal a club. They can, though, hint at a way out.
Confidence before the league kicks off
Ajax’s 1-4 win in Serbia has all but settled the tie before the return leg in Amsterdam. Next week’s game against Vojvodina already looks like a formality, the kind of night where the job is to avoid drama rather than chase it.
Waiting beyond that, most likely, is Shelbourne FC. The Irish side beat Nomme Kalju of Estonia 5-2 in their own tie and stand as the probable opponents in the third qualifying round. On paper, it is a path Ajax should navigate. On the pitch, it is a test of whether this “new wind” can hold when the stakes rise.
Blind, though, is looking slightly further ahead – to the start of the new VriendenLoterij Eredivisie season and the chance to show that these early signs are not just a summer breeze.
“That has to keep growing and really come alive again,” he said of the renewed spirit inside the club. “I think that is moving in the right direction.”
The results are starting to follow. The question now is whether Ajax can turn this fragile sense of unity into the kind of relentless momentum that once defined them.
