Ajax vs Tottenham: Champions League heartbreak has a crushing finality as hope kills Ajax’s dream

Lucas Moura's late, late goal was as gut-wrenching a goal as Ajax could have conceded. For this group of players, there will not be another chance

Almost every Ajax player was flat on the ground, desperate not to stand up, desperate not to be on this pitch, and the game was not even over.

They had conceded the ultimate nightmare goal, one that sent them from a Champions League final to misery and oblivion.

The deep fear in Amsterdam, even on the coaching staff, was that it would only take one goal for Ajax to crumble. But no-one could have dreamed up anything as catastrophic as this. Not after they had already scored two first half goals and looked in total control of the tie.

This was one of the most disastrous defeats in the modern history of the Champions League, and one of the most painful goals. The only difference between this and, say, the Ole Gunnar Solksjaer winner against Bayern Munich in 1999 or the Sergio Ramos equaliser in 2014 is that it came in the semi, not the final. But for the loser the pain will be just as much. Because they all know they will never get this chance again.

Ajax were 3-0 up on aggregate at half-time here, ready to book their flights to Madrid, after another impressive first-half display. They were on the cusp of doing what Marc Overmars and Edwin van der Sar and Louis van Gaal and even the late Johan Cruyff had hoped they would: finally getting back into the final of the Champions League, returning the team to the position it had enjoyed in the 1970s and 1990s. They had history back in the palms of their hands.

But 45 minutes later the players were on the floor in tears, unable to process the trauma of Lucas Moura’s skiddy winner. And one minute later, when the final whistle went, they were back on the floor again, having failed to reach the final and having failed to save themselves.

There is a natural comparison with Barcelona who blew their own 3-0 lead just last night . But this is different, and worse. Because this was at home, in front of their own noisy fans, who had put on a show before the game and supported them throughout. And because this was not against a high-speed Liverpool, arguably the best team in the world right now, but against a worn-out Tottenham. Deprived of Harry Kane and Harry Winks. In relegation form in the league. With nothing left in the tank. And Ajax still found a way to lose the game.

Ajax players lie dejected on the ground as Tottenham celebrate their last-gasp winner (BT Sport)

This is the distorting power of expectation in football. This Ajax run all the way from the second qualifying round until tonight has been a glorious underdog story. Ajax were never expected to win, which meant that they could always relax and play their expressive football. It took them to a good draw in Munich, a thrilling 4-1 win at Real Madrid and then that emphatic 2-1 win in Turin just last month.

But this fire relied on the fuel of unlikelihood and enjoyment. Matthijs de Ligt admitted last week that there is a new sort of pressure in games when they are expected to win, a pressure that they have not had to deal with. Mauricio Pochettino pointed this out too, saying that their strength was that they could play with what he called “irresponsibility and enormous freedom”, that their freedom owed to the lack of expectations on them. “It is a team that feels totally free to express themselves on the pitch because nobody expects anything,” Pochettino told El Pais this week. “No one has expected anything. They have that innocence to say, ‘I go out to play football.’”

Finally tonight, with Ajax 3-0 up in the tie and 45 minutes away from the final, all that expectation finally came rushing back. Ajax thought they had sealed themselves off from it but they had not. And like water dousing flame, all that expectation doused all of Ajax’s freedom. It got into their heads and killed their play. And even after 45 minutes of desperate scrambling, trying to resist the obvious change in the atmosphere, they could not hold it off. The expectation and that tantalising proximity to success is what killed them in the end.