This article supplements information found in Americans Abroad: John OÆBrien on page 10 of the Nov. 20, 2000 issue of Soccer America Magazine. John O’Brien left his Southern California home at 16 for a chance to train at Ajax Amsterdam’s legendary youth academy. Six and a half years later, the Dutch capital has become his second home and he’s found a spot, when healthy, in Ajax’s first-team lineup. We asked O’Brien about playing for Ajax and living in Amsterdam. BY SCOTT FRENCH AMSTERDAM ARENA. “A lot of people complain because they say the atmosphere is not like it was at De Meer,” John O’Brien says of the team’s futuristic stadium, opened in 1996 on the southern outskirts of the city. “At De Meer [Ajax’s cozy, former ground] there were 20,000 die-hards, and the ArenA holds 60,000. Not every fan makes noise. “I think it’s a great atmosphere. The field is situated like it’s on a podium. There’s a canal around the field and two huge rings [of seats]. You really feel like you’re the center of attention. “Almost every seat is a good seat. I prefer English-type stadiums, where you’re right on top of the field, but it’s a good stadium to sit in. I’ve sat in all different places, too, and it’s always a pretty good deal. [Seating] is purposely real steep, so you can be closer to the field, and some people are afraid of heights. My brother threatened to push me off a couple times. “De Meer was just a perfect field, really manufactured perfectly. The grass was always short — you could move the ball around real well. It just felt like a small stadium, and I was never too impressed with the ‘great’ atmosphere — for the youth team, not too many guys came out [to watch].” O’Brien attended first-team games at De Meer. “Everyone was pretty much standing up the whole game. It was mostly guys who came to games to De Meer — there was a lot more cursing and yelling and screaming. It made it a little more intense.” The ArenA draws a family crowd, with many women and children in attendance. There have been myriad problems with the field. The turf doesn’t get as much light — the stands rise high over the field, and there is a retractable roof. “We’re always getting new fields,” O’Brien says. Moving to the ArenA has proven beneficial to Ajax. Larger crowds mean more money, the stadium can be rented out for other events, it is home to the Ajax Museum, and the site contains offices, training fields and is near the new De Toekomst, the team’s youth academy. One of its stranger features: A road runs through the stadium, through a tunnel that lies underneath the field. “I like the fact you drive up and it’s just, ‘Whoa …,’ ” O’Brien says. “When the purple lights are on, it looks like a spaceship about to take off.” FANS. Amsterdam is a cosmopolitan city with only one soccer club, so the supporters’ passions may seem more subdued than those in Glasgow or Milan or Liverpool. Games against Feyenoord, from Rotterdam, suggest otherwise. “We lost at PSV last year, 4-0, and on our way back late at night, driving into the ArenA at 12:30, there were fans there, and they tried to block the bus from getting through,” O’Brien says. “They were slamming on the bus doors, and they pried the lower part of the compartment open and grabbed some bags. They got away with some free balls.” Are Ajax fans critical? “If the club wins, they won’t be out there at 12:30 at night.” O’Brien isn’t hassled in Amsterdam. “I don’t think that happens too much here,” he says. “Players will get comments if the team plays real bad, but it’s just comments, no intimidation or anything.” Players can move freely through the city without attracting much attention. “In general, they don’t think of it as you’re someone famous,” he says. “If Johan Cruyff walks down the street, he’ll get mobbed. I walk around, not too many people approach me. It’s ‘Hey, good luck.’ I live a normal life. “I’ve heard [likewise] from a lot of players. [Former teammate] Brian Laudrup had played in Italy, and he said he was so happy he could walk with his family through the streets here with no problem.” TEAMMATES. Who is Ajax’s biggest star? “The big star? That’s a tough one. Some of the older guys, [midfielder] Aron Winter, [forward Nikos] Machlas, [Richard Witschge — those guys are big guys. And some of the younger guys: [defender Cristian] Chivu, from Romania. He’s a real up-and-coming guy.” Fan favorites? “Chivu is pretty big, considering he’s a defender. The crowd likes him. They like Machlas, who scores goals. A young kid from Nigeria, [Pius] Ikedia, who played in the Olympics. He’s a small, little guy, and he can dribble guys like no problem. The crowd loves to see him play. He hasn’t played much yet, though.” O’Brien says Ajax has a strong chemistry, that everyone gets along. “I get along well with a lot of the foreigners, and some of the younger Dutch guys, some who were on my youth teams. … We hang out every once in a while.” CO ADRIAANSE. Co Adriaanse is the third coach Ajax has had since O’Brien arrived, following current Dutch national team coach Louis Van Gaal and Jan Wouters. “He’s very straightforward, a pretty hard-nosed guy, but he’s real honest. He’ll tell you exactly how it is,” O’Brien says. “He’s very analytical, likes to break down individual [play], talk in front of the whole group what you did well, what you did bad, analyzing the game more than most coaches I’ve worked with. … It’s very open, a direct atmosphere. Everyone is responsible for what they did, and you’re not going to get away with something, not with something you did bad. But it’s not a personal attack.” The Dutch are a very direct people, and it took some time for O’Brien to become comfortable with such analysis. “I talked with Gregg Berhalter about this. One time he apologized to his team for getting a red card, and the team made fun of him for doing that. [The attitude is] if something happens during a game, don’t take it personally or feel bad. Everyone accepts it. “I had a game where I scored an own goal that was not that much my fault, and then my guy scored the winner on a header. I told the group I was sorry, and everyone looked at my strange. ‘You just messed up.’ ” That mindset is “definitely a positive thing, but at the same time I wonder if it’s not deep enough. It’s kind of an individual thing: Everyone of the field is responsible for what they do. Sometimes it seems like something is missing. Normally a team will have an emotional bond, but this kind of makes it all not emotional.” O’Brien says Van Gaal was very much like Adriaanse, a “strategist [who] controlled everything to the points on I’s.” Wouters was an emotional coach. “He liked to see people really fight for it, wanted to create a good atmosphere in the team. I got along with him well. He’d go along with you sometimes when the team would go out to eat — he was closer to the players.” O’Brien says he doesn’t have a preference between Wouters’ and Van Gaal and Adriaanse’s styles. “It’s good to have both styles, to experience both styles. It kind of depends on the group you’re with. When you have an emotional coach who’s close to the players, you have to have a group that really gets along well, really wants to achieve something, otherwise I don’t think it works well. The other style, where you control everything and analyze everything, is more … stable.” EREDIVISIE. Ajax and the Dutch League has been weakened by an exodus of top players, including much of best young Dutch talent, to the richer leagues in Italy, Spain and England. “People say the competition is not what it used to be, but the past couple years the Dutch team has done well internationally. The environment is a very healthy environment. There are a lot of young players and coaches have attacking styles. If players don’t keep leaving for big money, the league can definitely go somewhere. Otherwise, the league internationally can’t do all that much except every once in a while.” O’Brien doesn’t see anything changing unless something major — such as the much-debated Atlantic League — occurs. Dutch League games tend to be entertaining, with both teams attacking — although small clubs will play more defensively against Ajax, Feyenoord or PSV, the “Big Three.” Most teams would rather lose, 6-4, than play for a 0-0 tie. “That’s actually something the media has been pretty good about creating,” O’Brien said. “They get on teams ridiculously if they don’t play attacking. Last season, we had a game we won, 3-0, and they got on us for not playing great soccer, attacking soccer. They were questioning the coach [about] what’s wrong after a 3-0 win.” MEDIA. Ajax gets regular attention from all the major newspapers and television stations. The relationship between players and media is not adversarial as in many European countries. “It’s all pretty reasonable, I think,” O’Brien says. “People pick on Ajax when it goes bad, but it’s not what it used to be. [Ajax] used to get a lot of negative [press]. … Last year our coach [Wouters] got fired, and much of the team decided not to talk to the media about a lot of the details. We’d never had actual problems with newspapers, just as a whole decided not to talk to them. Generally, they treat you pretty fairly.” The biggest newspapers covering the team are De Telegraaf, Het Parool, Algemeen Dagblad and De Volkskrant. Dutch and Amsterdam TV also have a regular presence at games and training. The primary difference between American and Dutch media is their angle. “The Dutch press likes to talk a lot about the tactical choices the coach makes, the tactical shifts in a game,” O’Brien says. “The American press talks more about the spirit of the team, trends, what’s it’s leading up to, which way the emotional swing is going to go.” Perhaps the American media, in general, doesn’t understand soccer tactics? “I’m sure some guys do. I’m not sure the American people want to read about it, though. People here love analyzing the game. The whole public knows a lot about soccer in general.” WEEK IN THE LIFE. A typical week at Ajax: “Usually, we have a game on Sunday, so Monday training is light. Tuesday we usually go twice. Wednesday is free. Thursday we train twice, Friday once, Saturday once. On Saturday the guys who are starting are working apart, separate from the rest of the group. We have fitness days Tuesday and Thursday with quite a bit of running. “We do a lot of technical work, passing drills, a lot of possession, lot of teamwork: small-sided games, small-sided sessions, play with certain restrictions, directional …” The schedule is impacted by midweek games. The longest session lasts about two hours, the shortest — the day after a game — sometimes no longer than 30 minutes. The players spend plenty of time in the ArenA, taking advantage of a roomy lounge where they can relax and get something to eat. “We usually have meals in there after training, and before training you can get some sandwiches there, some coffee,” O’Brien says. “It’s a place you can watch TV, you can hang out. There’s also facilities indoors, if you want to work a little extra: indoor AstroTurf, a weight room, you can ride bikes. People don’t make too much of that, but it’s there for us. “I’m in the weight room quite a bit, doing certain exercises to try to get myself fit [O’Brien is rehabilitating an Achilles’ injury]. And I like catching up [in the lounge], get a cup of tea, read the newspapers.” O’Brien reads the big Dutch dailies, and he’ll sometimes pick up USA Today’s international edition to keep tabs on what’s happening at home. “More so during [major-sport] playoffs,” he said. “During the baseball playoffs — I’m not too into baseball, but a Subway Series, that’s kind of cool.” It’s tough to follow American sport in Amsterdam, although some games are on cable or can be seen in bars and cafes. “I kind of miss having many sports,” he says. “Here it is all about soccer. I watch basketball games, a football game once in a while.” He also has attended World Football League games involving the Amsterdam Admirals, who play at the ArenA. AMSTERDAM. O’Brien lives on one of Amsterdam’s major canals in the central part of the city. “It’s a beautiful city, with a lot of freedom, and everything is close to each other, and it’s easy to get around.” It also has a reputation as a wild town. Prostitution is legal — there are several red-light areas, with prostitutes on view behind windows — and soft drugs such as marijuana and hashish can be purchased and used at “coffeeshops.” Mushrooms and other psychedelics are available at “smart shops.” O’Brien doesn’t indulge. “We’re in Amsterdam — you can take on the whole Amsterdam attitude,” says O’Brien. “But we can be tested for marijuana and different drugs. They’re banned by FIFA, so we’re under those rules. “But Rokerij [one of Amsterdam’s leading “coffeeshops”] is a nice bar, with a good atmosphere. OK, you can buy marijuana there, too. You can go to places like that, as a player, and not have to worry about your face getting into the paper.” The city is at its best on Queen’s Day (April 30, the anniversary of Queen Beatrix’s crowning). “It’s mad,” O’Brien says. “It’s supposedly the one day anyone can sell anything on the streets. Bands are playing everywhere, there are parties, fireworks going off, boats all over the canals — you can literally walk from boat to boat. It’s out of control.” The canals are wonderfully picturesque, lined with old buildings. O’Brien says he’s considering getting a boat “for summertime.” In winter, when they freeze, the canals are filled with skaters. “It’s like out of a book,” he says. “Charles Dickens or something.” TELEVISION. Amsterdam cable television has “two channels, basically,” one for movies, one for sport. One can get Eurosport outside the city but not in Amsterdam. There are about 25 TV stations available without cable, and much of the programming is American. All of it is subtitled rather than dubbed. “I prefer watching ‘Seinfeld’ to some of the Dutch comedies,” says O’Brien, who is fairly fluent in Dutch. “I like some of [the Dutch fare], some of it is pretty original, they talk about more things than you would on American TV. A lot of programs try to copy American ideals for television: game shows, talk shows. Some are pretty bad.” LANGUAGE. O’Brien learned Dutch while with the youth team, which made it easier to establish friendships with his teammates. He still works on his fluency. “It was pretty difficult at the start,” he says. “There are a lot of different sounds in Dutch.” He attended classes in Dutch his first two years at Ajax, then went to a Dutch school and took different subjects in the language. Last year Ajax assigned tutors to its foreign players. O’Brien would be assigned a topic, do research and debate with his teacher in Dutch. FOOD. Dutch food is rather bland, but Amsterdam is an international city with every conceivable cuisine represented. Indonesian food — the rijfstafel is a must for any A’dam visitor — is “probably my favorite,” O’Brien says, and he has become quite fond of Dutch bakery items. Stroopwaffels (syrup waffles) and bosch bolletjes (a cream-filled pastry similar to an eclair “but better”) are his favorites. LEISURE. On his days off, when the weather is decent (and it often is not), O’Brien prefers to take it easy. “I’ll buy some take-out Surinamese or Indonesian food and head out to Vondelpark or another of the parks and hang out with my buddies,” he says. “In summertime, it’s light ’til 10 at night, so we can relax in the park. It sounds kind of simple. I can’t see myself saying that in America: ‘I’m gonna go hang out at the park.’ ” Vondelpark is Amsterdam’s Central Park, and it’s near the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum, the two best-known of the city’s many fine museums. O’Brien is not much of a museum-goer, however, and tends to save those trips for when friends or family visit. “How many times have I been to Anne Frankhuis?” he says. “Four. It’s still the same house.” (Scott French is a senior editor at Soccer America.)