Roma discuss Kluivert, Veretout and Diawara with Marseille
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The Ajax Kid Who Will Be King
The Ajax Kid Who Will Be King It has taken just over a year, but the rest of the world has now realised what everyone at Ajax has known for some time – Justin Kluivert can become one of the best players on the planet. The 18-year-old’s professional career is barely 50 games old but his devastating pace and mesmerising skills have seen him go from academy graduate to first-team regular at the Johan Cruijff ArenA. Coaches and pundits are lining up to tout him as the game’s next superstar. He has beaten Gianluigi Donnarumma to this year’s NxGn award, while Europe’s top clubs are scrambling for his signature. Yet rather than turn his back on such attention, Kluivert is embracing it. He will casually talk up a future transfer to either Real Madrid or Barcelona, while at the same time listing Arsenal, Tottenham, Chelsea and Manchester United as alternative destinations, insisting that the “possibilities are already there” to join one of the continent’s top teams. It may be rare to hear a youngster so willing to fuel rather than quell transfer talk, but Kluivert is no ordinary player. He conducts himself with a swagger. Nothing fazes him. If his status as one of the Amsterdam club's most exciting prospects in years did not place enough pressure on his shoulders, there is the added burden of being the son of Ajax and Barcelona legend Patrick. Kluivert, though, doesn’t seem in the least bit bothered by the weight of expectation. He deals with the hype as he does with defenders on the field: facing it head-on, with great confidence and purpose. Despite all the options available to him, he holds a career at Camp Nou as the ultimate goal, as if to directly challenge the legacy his father left behind “My dream club? Barcelona. That is my dream club,” he told Goal when presented with the NxGn award. “To follow in my father’s footsteps? Yes. That is my dream club in the end. I would not mind going elsewhere, but Barcelona is the dream.” This is not a talent under any illusions. He may be privileged in many ways, but he knows he will not sail through life and to Camp Nou stardom. When asked what makes him so special, he says: "I think that I always used to make plenty of sacrifices to achieve my goal and to have a successful career, and I still do so. I think that is crucial for youngsters who want to make it. Plus, there is obviously the matter of talent and working hard in training." Of course, he is used to scrutiny at this stage. A special buzz has followed him from his early teens, when word spread throughout Netherlands that the son of the man who scored Ajax’s winner in their 1995 Champions League win over AC Milan had become a star of the club’s youth sector. Kluivert progressed rapidly through the world-renowned academy, featuring for the Under-19s at the age of 16 before breaking into the senior squad a year later, after a short spell in Dutch football’s second tier with Jong Ajax. By the time he made his Ajax debut at 17 in January 2017, he had grown accustomed to being constantly compared to his father, one of Netherlands’ greatest ever goalscorers.
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