After four years in the Premier League with Southampton Dusan Tadic wanted to go to only one club. From a young age he dreamed about playing for Ajax and last year he got his move to Amsterdam. What followed was a fairytale and there may be more to come.
As Tadic strides through Ajax’s De Toekomst training ground a familiar face is among the visitors in the clubhouse. Sjaak Swart, known as Mister Ajax after rising through the ranks to play more than 600 games for the first team, is a frequent guest even at the age of 81.
He and Tadic share a warm embrace and the mutual appreciation is tangible. “He has been so good for the club,” Swart says. The two men represent Ajax glory, past and present. Tadic is quickly making a name for himself, having scored 46 goals in 81 games.
The Serbian playmaker can only dream of matching the three consecutive European Cups won by Swart with Ajax in the early 1970s. But last year he came fairly close, only for Spurs to spoil the party in the dying seconds of the Champions League semi-final.
It was a huge blow, exacerbated by the fact that Ajax were chasing a treble achieved only once before, in 1972 – with Swart part of the team. Tadic well remembers the moment Lucas Moura scored the decisive goal in the 96th minute.
“I’ve never seen that kind of silence, both in the stadium and in the days after inside the club,” he says. “It felt like people couldn’t talk or eat for a couple of days. It was a big disappointment because I think we deserved to be in the final.”
Perhaps to Ajax’s advantage there was not much time to mourn because two league matches followed with the Dutch title at stake. “We were thinking: ‘If we win the league and the cup, then the year will be still very successful,’” Tadic says. “But if we had lost we would have felt very bad. In the end we won, so we completed the season in a good way.”
Where the semi-final against Spurs felt unreal, the recent Champions League match against Chelsea was bizarre. Tadic admits it was the craziest game he has been involved in, with Ajax blowing a 4-1 lead after losing their two central defenders and conceding a penalty in the space of five seconds. Until then Ajax had been superior but they conceded three second-half goals, just as against Spurs, and drew 4-4. They now need a point at home to Valencia on Tuesday to be sure of progressing to the last 16.
Tadic dismisses suggestions that Ajax had been naive against Tottenham and Chelsea in focusing on increasing their lead rather than defending their advantage. “Spurs gave us problems with [Fernando] Llorente; they were playing long balls on him,” he says. “If we had dropped a little bit more back, then I think we would have had even more problems because he would have been directly in the box with more high balls coming his way.”
It is an interesting observation from the 31-year-old, who analyses football astutely and is attracted to the idea of becoming a manager. At the start of this season he extended his contract to 2026 with the aim of taking a coaching role during that period. “I love football and I like to discuss a lot of moments and details from the game,” Tadic says.
He hopes to play for as long as possible, gaining coaching knowledge in the process, and knows he is in a good place to learn. He admires the Ajax philosophy, which captivated him as a boy. “From a young age I’ve always loved Ajax,” Tadic says.
A projected move there in 2012 did not materialise – he was with Groningen in the Netherlands at the time, having left Serbia two years earlier – and when the club renewed their interest two years ago he knew the moment was right. His gamble to leave the Premier League in his prime has paid off, though Tadic never really saw it as a risk.
“A lot of clubs were really interested but I said to Southampton that I only wanted to go to Ajax. Perhaps they wanted me to go to another club, but I was immediately clear. I said: ‘This is the only club that I want to go to.’”
Eventually, in June 2018, Southampton accepted an initial fee of €11.4m (£9.6m), lower than expected. “I think I deserved to go where I wanted after what I did for the club in four years,” Tadic says. “Because before I eventually left I had lots of other chances to leave, but then I stayed and also signed a new contract.” He has fond memories of his time at St Mary’s, especially his first two years, during which the club recorded their highest Premier League finish of sixth, in 2015-2016. “We were amazing – those were the best years of Southampton’s history. It’s very nice that I’ll be always part of that.”
Tadic emphasises his overall gratefulness towards the club, who ideally would have kept their talisman or sold him for a higher fee. “I really appreciate that they let me follow my feeling, because they probably would have received more money from other clubs.”
Tadic speaks about his special connection with Ajax. “I think they needed me and I needed them. I think we have truly found each other,” he says, laughing.
They certainly have. His debut season included impressive wins at Real Madrid and Juventus. Tadic regards the 4-1 victory at the Bernabéu as the most special match of his career; he received a 10 from L’Équipe and a congratulatory text from his friend Novak Djokovic. He admits the season exceeded his expectations. “I expected a lot, but not so much like this. After Ajax didn’t play Champions League for four years nobody would assume we would play the semi-finals.”
Nothing, it seems, will get him out of Amsterdam soon. In the summer he had proposals from the Premier League and a Chinese club – believed to be Dalian Yifang – offered him a reported €42m for three seasons but he turned them down. Confronted with those figures, he smiles and admits the offer was in that region.
“It was something crazy, yeah,” says Tadic, who concedes that others might not be able to resist the temptation. “You can just get crazy … I had a few times good offers from China, but you also need to listen to your heart. I think money is not everything; happiness is something you cannot buy. Inside I feel rich.”
