What has characterized Ajax this season, what carried Erik ten Hag’s team past Real Madrid in the round of 16 and Juventus in the quarterfinals, is fearlessness. It has refused to succumb to conventional wisdom, that a team from a lesser league and paid lesser wages must automatically shrink into its shell to have any hope of surviving. Tottenham, at full strength, is a fearsome proposition, one perhaps not quite as redolent of European glory as either Real Madrid or Juventus, but a modern powerhouse all the same. Ajax, for the first time in this Champions League run, started a game as the favorite. There is a pressure in having nothing to lose, in trying to achieve the impossible, to overturn the odds.

Source: New York Times April 30, 2019 22:58 UTC