The cruelty of the professional league lies in the fierce competition.
The fierce competition has led to the head coaches of all teams digging into each other's loopholes and weaknesses, and giving the Thunder a blow to defeat the opponent.
If you want not to be knocked down by the other party, you have to keep changing.
There is never a perfect, unbeatable tactic in this world. Only by constantly changing and constantly innovating can we gain a foothold in the professional league, otherwise it will only be dealt a fatal blow by the opponent.
Ronald Coleman, as the head coach who has been coaching for many years, naturally knows this very well.
He also knows that Ajax is now in this situation.
The brutal beauty of top-flight football lies in its unforgiving competitiveness.
Every match is a battlefield. Every touch, every pass, every tactical decision is scrutinized, exploited, and dissected by rival analysts and coaching staff. In this relentless environment, there's no room for complacency. Coaches must continually adapt, searching for ways to evolve their systems and stay one step ahead — or risk being exposed and outclassed.
There is no such thing as a perfect, invincible tactic. No blueprint works forever. The only path to long-term survival in the professional game is through evolution — constant, restless innovation. Stagnation is fatal.
Ronald Koeman, a veteran of the dugout with years of managerial experience under his belt, understood this truth better than most.
And right now, Ajax were teetering on that edge.
On the one hand, Koeman was tempted to stick with the tactical stability that had delivered results last season. It was a system built around dynamic movement and positional fluidity — a system that worked, primarily because Yang Yang had been in unstoppable form.
But this season, things were different.
Yang Yang hadn't yet found his rhythm. The sharpness that defined his every action last year was still lacking, and as a result, he struggled to dictate the tempo of Ajax's attacks. Even worse, PSV Eindhoven had clearly identified him as the danger man, applying tight man-marking and aggressive doubling-up on the flanks.
"Ronald, make up your mind," Ruud Krol urged in a low voice.
As assistant coach, Krol tended to side with Yang Yang's instincts — encouraging the team to press higher, take initiative, and attack with purpose. He respected boldness. And in moments like this, he believed hesitation was more dangerous than risk.
But Ronald Koeman was conservative by nature. Years of coaching had shaped him into a man who valued structure, caution, and control. Even when he had attacking talents like Ibrahimović, Sonck, and Van der Vaart at his disposal, he had rarely allowed them full freedom. And now, with an even younger group, he was understandably even more cautious.
But the situation was becoming critical.
The Eredivisie hadn't officially started yet, which meant there was still room for error. Still time to experiment. But once the league got underway, every mistake would carry weight. Every slip-up would be costly.
Koeman frowned deeply, locked in thought. After a few seconds, he finally gave a quiet nod toward Krol.
"Then bring on Yaya Touré."
Krol didn't hesitate. He turned to the bench and shouted, "Yaya! Start warming up!" He gestured firmly, signaling the urgency of the substitution.
When he returned to the technical area, Koeman had already sat back down on the bench, arms folded, eyes fixed on the pitch.
"Ruud," he said without looking away, "what do you think about giving Yang Yang the captain's armband?"
Galásek was still officially Ajax's first captain, but when he wasn't on the pitch, the responsibility usually fell to Heitinga. The academy graduate had potential — leadership qualities, even — but he was still too impulsive, too raw. A central defender who hadn't yet found full composure.
And besides, wasn't Sneijder also there now? It raised the question of hierarchy.
Krol frowned slightly, misunderstanding Koeman's intent.
"I don't think Yang Yang is trying to fight for the armband," he said carefully. "He's not that kind of player."
He assumed Koeman was worried about dressing room politics — that Yang Yang might be withholding his best out of frustration over leadership decisions.
But Koeman immediately waved off the idea.
"No, no. That's not what I meant. I know Yang Yang. He doesn't play those games," he replied. "But I genuinely believe he could be a great captain — a proper role model."
Krol didn't respond right away.
Would Yang Yang make a good captain?
That really depended on how you defined the role.
He wasn't a Roy Keane-type — not the fiery, confrontational figure who rallied teammates with aggression. On the pitch, Yang Yang was calm and calculated. He never rose to provocation. He played clean, never resorted to dirty tricks, never exaggerated contact. His game was disciplined and elegant.
Referees across the league had come to respect him. There were even whispers that if Yang Yang ever went down in the box, it must be a penalty — because he simply didn't dive.
Off the pitch, he was the model professional. Meticulous, punctual, self-disciplined. Always the first to arrive at training, and usually the last to leave. On matchdays, he played with relentless focus until the final minute, never dropping his intensity.
This kind of consistency, that refusal to ever let up, made him the embodiment of leadership by example.
And he wasn't just a role model — he was Ajax's number one star. The core of the team. The soul of their attack.
All things considered, Yang Yang was indeed an excellent candidate.
"But now's not the time, Ronald," Krol said gently.
Koeman nodded. "I know. I was just thinking aloud. We'll come back to it when the time's right."
...
...
In the fifty-sixth minute, Ajax made their first decisive change of the evening.
Yaya Touré stepped onto the pitch to replace Tomas Galásek in central midfield.
There was no wave of excitement from the stands. In truth, the fans barely reacted. Touré's previous appearances had been underwhelming — tidy in possession, yes, but lacking impact. He hadn't yet made his mark in Amsterdam.
But while the substitution seemed routine to the spectators, the message from the Ajax bench was anything but.
Touré wasn't just a fresh pair of legs — he was the messenger of a new tactical directive. As he jogged across the pitch, he brought with him Ronald Koeman's clearest signal yet: total attack.
It was a declaration. No more hesitation.
Ajax were going to push forward — with everything they had.
The change was immediate.
The shape of the game flipped like a switch. The midfield line surged forward in unison, and even the full-backs crept higher up the pitch, squeezing space and applying pressure.
Up front, the attacking trio of Pienaar, Charisteas, and Yang Yang began pressing PSV's defensive line with relentless energy. Their pressing wasn't wild — it was orchestrated, intelligent, with triggers on every poor first touch or backward pass.
Just behind them, Yaya Touré, De Jong, and Sneijder locked onto their midfield counterparts, stepping high, cutting angles, and forcing hurried clearances. The result was a suffocating high press that pinned Eindhoven back inside their own half.
PSV struggled to cope.
Without Mark van Bommel to anchor the midfield and break the press with clever positioning or quick passing, their central structure looked brittle. Every Ajax wave seemed heavier than the last. The passes got sloppier. The first touches heavier. Panic started to set in.
Guus Hiddink could be seen on the sideline, frantically signaling to his players: hold your shape, don't drop too deep.
But the message came too late. The momentum had shifted.
The deeper PSV dropped, the more Ajax sensed blood.
Yang Yang, who had been tightly marked for most of the match, suddenly began finding pockets of space as the press rattled the Eindhoven lines. With every minute, his influence grew. He drifted into half-spaces, timed his runs with precision, and offered clean passing options under pressure. The tempo was building toward a climax.
Then came the 72nd minute.
Ajax were deep into a pressing sequence in PSV's half. A rushed clearance was played toward the halfway line, where Ron Vlaar managed to get his head to it, knocking the ball down centrally.
Ajax reacted first.
Maicon, stepping up from the right, latched onto the loose ball and immediately drove it forward. Yang Yang, already alert, peeled into space near the right channel and called for it. Maicon spotted the run and threaded a firm diagonal pass to feet.
Yang Yang controlled it with one fluid touch and braced himself.
Behind him, Young-Pyo Lee closed in rapidly.
In a moment of deceptive simplicity, Yang Yang let the ball roll across his body and performed a sharp drag-back and pivot. His body went left, but he exploded right, slipping past Young-Pyo Lee with a feint so quick the Korean full-back had to stutter-step to regain balance.
Lucius, the PSV centre-back, had to step out to cover — but that only opened more space.
Yang Yang slipped a short, angled pass into Sneijder, who had ghosted into the right half-space outside the penalty area. Without pausing, Sneijder swept a left-footed pass across the edge of the box toward the top of the D.
There, at full speed, came Yaya Touré.
He had made a lung-bursting run from deep — undetected, unchecked.
The PSV midfield had collapsed too far back, with no one stepping up to challenge. This was the exact absence Van Bommel would have filled — shielding that space, cutting off that pass.
But now it was wide open.
Touré didn't hesitate.
One touch. Then, from just outside the area, he unleashed a ferocious strike with his right foot.
The ball screamed through the air, skipping just above the turf, before cannoning off the underside of the crossbar with a deep, echoing thud and ricocheting down across the line.
A brief moment of silence — then eruption.
The stadium exploded. The sound of the ball smashing the woodwork seemed to ignite the crowd all at once.
1–1!
Ajax had drawn level.
With just under twenty minutes to play, everything was back on the table.
...
...
Yaya Touré's goal ignited the Amsterdam Arena like a match to dry tinder.
The fans, who had been growing restless throughout the first half, suddenly erupted into raucous cheers. A new signing, in his very first official appearance for the club, had just delivered the equalizer — and in spectacular fashion.
It wasn't just the timing of the goal that stunned the crowd, but the manner of it.
That long-range strike from outside the box — blistering in power, dipped with precision — was the kind of goal that announces a player's arrival. The kind of goal that silences doubters.
On the touchline, both Ronald Koeman and Ruud Krol exchanged glances of disbelief. Neither had expected the Ivorian midfielder, known more for his physique and defensive presence, to produce such a technically pure and explosive finish.
Guus Hiddink, on the opposite bench, looked momentarily confused. He muttered something to his assistant, gesturing toward the pitch.
Wasn't Yaya Touré supposed to be a holding midfielder? Since when did he do that?
But the surprises weren't over.
As the match continued, Touré grew more comfortable. His passing became crisper, his movement more decisive. Sneijder and De Jong, too, began to find rhythm, their interplay smoothing out as the midfield trio took control of the tempo.
With the structure behind him solidifying, Yang Yang began drifting wider and deeper, testing PSV's defensive shape. He switched to the left flank more frequently, having realized that Young-Pyo Lee was clinging to him with the tenacity of industrial-strength adhesive. The South Korean fullback wasn't flashy, but he was relentless — constantly tracking, constantly pressing.
Yang needed space, and so he went to find it.
Just six minutes after the equalizer, Ajax struck again.
It began with De Jong, who read a loose pass in midfield and stepped in to win the ball cleanly. He poked it forward to Yaya Touré, who controlled it with a neat touch, rolled his body across the ball to shake off pressure, and quickly slipped a pass into the feet of Charisteas near the top of the box.
The Greek forward held his position well and laid the ball off to Sneijder, who — with one glance — threaded a line-breaking pass into the right channel of the box.
Gomes, PSV's Brazilian goalkeeper, saw the danger and rushed off his line immediately. Young-Pyo Lee chased Pienaar, who was already sprinting after the through ball into the right side of the penalty area.
Pienaar didn't have the lead on Lee, and he couldn't create separation. But he reached the ball first and, without taking a touch, slid his right foot under it to deliver a low cross.
The ball zipped across the face of goal — skimming the turf, evading Gomes, and curling into space near the left post.
And arriving perfectly on cue was Yang Yang.
Having timed his diagonal run to perfection, he cut across the face of Lucius, darting into the left edge of the six-yard box. With a composed right-footed push, he guided the ball into the exposed net.
2–1!
"GOALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!"
"YANG YANG FINALLY SCORES!"
"His first goal of the new season — and what a crucial one it is!"
The Amsterdam Arena shook with joy. Fans leapt to their feet, scarves held high, songs echoing through every tier of the stadium.
They had been waiting for this moment.
Through preseason, through the Amsterdam Tournament, and now into the Dutch Super Cup — everyone had been hoping to see last season's top scorer find the net again. And though his form hadn't been sharp, and his touches had lacked their usual finesse, the effort had never been in question.
The media, the fans — even his teammates — had watched as he worked relentlessly to rediscover his edge. And now, finally, a reward.
A goal.
And not just any goal — a goal built through the heart of Ajax's philosophy.
"That goal showcased everything Ajax are trying to do," the commentator analyzed.
"Yaya Touré's progressive ball, Charisteas's smart link-up play, Sneijder's vision with the through pass…"
"Then Pienaar — so unselfish, so precise with that cutback — and Yang Yang, always in the right place, calm as ever with the finish."
"It was fluid. Cohesive. A textbook example of coordinated attacking movement."
"And now, with Yang Yang off the mark, you have to wonder — is this the spark that lights his season?"
Ajax had done it.
2–1.
They had reversed the deficit. The momentum was theirs. And with the crowd behind them, the clock ticking down, and the players swelling with confidence — the Dutch Super Cup was suddenly there for the taking.