Ajax - Hark The Herald Angels Sing

For the first team of the Amsterdam soccer club Ajax, the 1999-2000 season was a dramatic one. They lost match after match, when they should have been celebrating: it was the club’s 100th anniversary. But director Roel van Dalen not only filmed the players of the first squad; he also went to Ghana, where Ajax has a soccer school and scouts are hunting for cheap young talent. He also captured the activities of the junior apprentices, boys of around ten years old being coached rigorously on their way to the championship at the end of the season. The camera follows the players, the coaches and the members of the technical staff from the pitch, where they are in the spotlight, right into the privacy of changing rooms and offices. In the changing room, everyone deals with the tensions and frustrations individually. We see how the young Christian Chivu swallows his disappointment after being sent off with a red card and how the junior apprentices are cursed when they have not given their utmost in the warm-up. All this shows how great the pressure on the players is: they must perform, and if they do not, they are out. In staff meetings, the far-reaching tendrils of commercialisation are particularly apparent. AFC Ajax is a multi-million-dollar industry, involving uncompromising business interests alongside passion for the game of soccer.