We go back in time and start in the summer of 1995. The Champions League win stirred up the life of the then young Van der Sar, he remembers.
"I went on holiday to Greece with my girlfriend and was suddenly recognised and spoken to everywhere. Once back in the Netherlands, Louis van Gaal immediately brought us back to reality and we started from scratch again. It worked because in the period after that we probably played our very best football."
Blind also remembers that time: "Nobody thought it was possible for a young team from Amsterdam to win the Champions League. After that all eyes were on us and we had to focus on football."
Tokyo
Shortly after Real Madrid were brushed aside with great play, Ajax travelled to Japan for the game against Grêmio. "We had seen a lot of Europe", Van de Sar talks about that experience. "But I had never been to Japan and Tokyo was so huge with those tall buildings and traffic jams everywhere."
Scolari's tears
The Brazilian opponent was on edge, perhaps more so than Ajax. Blind: "I met their then coach Felipe Scolari at the 2014 World Cup, when I was assistant to the Dutch national team, and had a cup of coffee with him. We talked about that match in Tokyo and then he still had tears in his eyes... He was still so disappointed about it."
The episode is now only available on JUKE and the Ajax channels, and will be on all the other podcast apps too as of Friday afternoon.
On JUKE, you can also listen back to all the other episodes of the Ajax Podcast.
