LONDON — In the first few seconds of his first Champions League semifinal, the biggest game of his career, the brightest stage, with Tottenham Hotspur Stadium baying and roaring around him, with the eyes of the world upon him, with the weight of Ajax’s gilded history on his back and the hope of the present on his shoulders, Frenkie de Jong controlled the ball. He looked up. And he shimmied.
That is where it all started. Ajax would need far more than that one move to beat Tottenham Hotspur, of course, and take a small but significant step toward a first Champions League final in more than two decades. It would require, at various points, a laser focus in defense and a precision scalpel in attack; a deep wellspring of energy and a rich seam of resolve; Matthijs de Ligt’s gritted-teeth indomitability and Donny van de Beek’s dead-eyed finishing.
But the shimmy encapsulated everything; the shimmy explained it all. How a team built with a fraction of the budget of a typical Champions League contender finds itself, after Tuesday’s 1-0 victory over Spurs, 90 minutes from the final; how these players could eliminate Real Madrid and Juventus; why this squad has not just won all of its knockout games on the road, but so many hearts and minds along the way.
It came straight from the kickoff. The ball rolled back to de Jong. Scarcely can a 21-year-old have looked quite so at ease in such surroundings, such circumstances. De Ligt is the captain, and leader, of this Ajax team; Hakim Ziyech is its imagination. De Jong is its brain.
He looked up, assessing his situation. He saw: Daley Blind and de Ligt drifting either side of him, left and right, his primary options; his fullbacks, Nicolás Tagliafico and Joel Veltman, beyond them, the more ambitious possibilities; directly in front of him, the imposing Spurs striker Fernando Llorente bearing down on him. De Jong did not move.
Llorente is not quick — and would not pretend to be quick — but he is a sizable obstacle. De Jong might have had the sensation of being closed down by an encroaching glacier. He might have felt hemmed in, a little panicked. He might have rushed his pass, or made a poor choice, or dallied a moment too long.
Instead, he shimmied. He leaned forward on his right foot, drawing Llorente in, a dancer beginning a tango. He did it again: the slightest shift in weight, a momentary drop of the shoulders. Llorente crept closer, sniffing a chance. The ball had been at de Jong’s feet for what seemed like an age. He still did not move. At the last moment, his prey in his trap, his point made, he calmly knocked the ball off to his side. Llorente lunged at thin air. Ajax began to play.
