There was to be no fairytale ending for the new kids on the Ajax block Wednesday night in Stockholm as they crashed and dissipated uselessly and without impact like waves against billion-year-old rocks. If their fresh faced, barely out of diapers future superstars hadn’t realized before, they sure do now after those grueling, boring, frustrating 90 minutes, that life is nasty, brutish, and short. When even Juan Mata is out there cleating you, it might just be time to pack up and go home and let them enjoy their “treble”.
How many fingers should we hold up, coach? Are you sure the Community Shield counts? The crappest treble of all time. I hope you find someone in life who looks at you like Ander Herrera drinks in everything Mourinho says and does.
Arch Mourinho. Directing team to raise three fingers, forcing newspapers to celebrate United's "treble" on their back pages pic.twitter.com/pFMJAoek7t
— Men in Blazers (@MenInBlazers) May 24, 2017
Cynicism aside, it was a classic Mourinho big game performance with a classic Mourinho result and scoreline. The effortless 2-0 that leaves the other team feeling that they could’ve played this game a thousand times and they would’ve lost 2-0 every time, in the exact same manner. It was, at times, quite literally men against boys.
Ajax’s kids played far too much like the teenagers most of them basically still are. Plenty of naive effort and hustle and bustle and enterprise; plenty of mistakes, silliness, poor decisions. If you watch college sports in the USA, you’ll be familiar with the paradigm. You’ll never win anything with kids.
Bertrand Traoré, former Mourinho youth statistic, future Chelsea loan-victim, tried and tried, without much to show for it. What’s next for him? Who knows. Maybe it’s Chelsea. Maybe it’s Lyon. Maybe it’s somewhere else. What is for sure is that there will be better days ahead for him and the rest of the red-and-white shirted youngsters. None impressed greatly on Wednesday night, but it won’t be the last time we hear of Matthijs de Light, 17 or Davinson Sanchez, 20 or even Hakim Ziyech who’s practically ancient at 24.
So, congrats to José on his crappest of trebles. Let’s go win the Double.