Ajax Game

Last night we had the wonderful opportunity to
attend an Amsterdam Ajax soccer game. The Ajax team (pronounced "Eye Ax") is very popular around here. The arena that Jared plays his football games in is actually the Ajax Arena. The Admirals team security director, Dick, has season tickets. He and his family live just outside of Amsterdam and regularly attend the Ajax games. He had the option to buy some extra tickets and so graciously invited us to go. We attending the game with Dick, and the Admirals strength coach Tom Perry and his wife Angela. The picture to the right is of Tom, Angela, myself and Jared.

As am sure you all know, soccer is a much more popular sport here than football. The fans are absolutely wild. They come to the game decked out in their Ajax attire. They bang their drums, blow their whistles, and wave thier flags throughout the game. It's wonderful to see their enthusiastic spirit.

The other team (Roda JC from southern Holland) was ahead 1-0 as the game came to an end. Time had run out and they were playing on injury time when an Ajax forward scored on a bicycle kick. The stadium went nuts. Not 5 seconds later the whistle blew to end the game. In overtime Ajax score 3 goals. Needless to say it turned out to be a very exciting game and Ajax won 4-1. It was a very important game for Ajax because the win put them in the Gatorade Cup finals.

Jared made friends with some very interesting locals sitting next to him. By the end of the game they were hugging and jumping around together. Chants are really big at soccer games here and one that lasted forever translated to something like "If you're not jumping you're a fool". Thank goodness we had Dick with us to translate! We jumped our little hearts out along with the rest of the 45,000+ fans.