Ajax face test of maturity

Fantastic team
Koeman, however, remains typically calm in his approach. "Arsenal have a fantastic team," he said, "and their manager, Arsène Wenger, has had the time and the money to construct a fantastic new team. They are one of the favourites for the Champions League."

'Best style'
For Koeman, Arsenal represent the pinnacle of modern football, a fusing of technical ability with a passion and a will to win. He said: "Foreign players make the English league more attractive. Now there is a balance between English and international styles and that's the best style there is."

Technically adept
Perhaps the most technically adept of Arsenal's foreign legion is Dennis Bergkamp, who, of course, learned his skills at Ajax. Koeman said of the striker: "Bergkamp has been fantastic recently. He fits in well to the Arsenal system. He can play to his strengths and he doesn't have to defend, but can wait for the moment to produce something special."

European champions
If Bergkamp represents Ajax's past, this crop of youngsters are very definitely the future. Koeman - partly because of a lengthy injury list - has regularly fielded sides this season featuring only two players over the age of 21, and he is in no doubt that this is the best generation since the 1995 Champions League winners.

'Surprise for everybody'
Nonetheless, a few months ago, nobody would have expected Ajax to be going into Tuesday's game as joint leaders of Group B. "It was a surprise for everybody in Holland that we were second in the [first group stage] group," Koeman said. "And now we've played two games in the second round - we were a little bit lucky against Valencia [CF], then we beat [AS] Roma so we still have a chance of going through."

Maturing players
But where that chance may in others awake dreams of glory, Koeman remains unruffled, insisting the learning experience is the important thing. "We don't have the pressure that we have to go on in the Champions League," he said. "We know our level, and we are in a no-lose situation. Even in six months I have seen young players grow up, and they are different from how they were three or four months ago."

Bosman ruling
It has been said that Ajax suffered more from the Bosman ruling than any other club, as their great side of 1995, which also reached the final the following year, disintegrated at a fraction of the value it would have drawn two years previously.

Economic downturn
It is Koeman's good fortune that the economic downturn means he has the chance to keep his generation together, and the potential of that is enormous. "Things are more business-oriented now than they were," he said, "but Ajax are still a club that gives young players a chance to grow up and come into the first team."

Time to grow
He concluded: "Maybe now the market has gone down it will turn out that we have the players for more time than before, so we can build little by little a good team, a young team who can win, maybe in five or six years' time, a Champions League." Tuesday will be a stern test of how far along that road Koeman and the modern Ajax are.