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The goalkeeper Stanley Menzo has not been active for almost 20 years, but he still has a best performance to this day.
During his active time as the goalkeeper of Ajax Amsterdam, he played 117 games without a break and never missed a single game, which is a club record.
Still, one would like to add, Menzo could soon say goodbye to first place in this Ajax ranking.
It's approaching: Dusan Tadic.
The Serb was signed by Ajax in 2018, since then he has not missed a single game in the honor division for the record champions.
104 games in a row, that's already fifth in the all-time Ajax table.
On the coming weekend, if things go normally, he will catch up with Gert Bals, who has been fourth so far.
Bals, like Menzo Torwart, probably only know the historically interested soccer nerds.
Even though he was the first Dutchman to ever play for FC Barcelona.
Barca coach Rinus Michels brought his compatriot into the team for a single friendly against Fortuna Düsseldorf in 1973 because all of his other goalkeepers were injured.
Bals was already 37 at the time.
Never hurt, never locked
Tadic is not 37 yet, but he will at least be 33 in November, and it is all the more astonishing how incessantly, how tirelessly he works at Ajax.
Never hurt, never locked.
And for reasons of performance, there was no reason to ever forego his commitment anyway.
Tadic is the soul of Ajax Amsterdam, or as sporting director Marc Overmars called it: "He's the cement between the stones of this team." Without the team captain, the foundation would crumble.
Overmars unceremoniously declared it "not for sale" in the summer.
Trainer Erik ten Hag calls him the "anchor".
Tadic's success story is one that is unusual in today's football.
And a bit more unusual for Ajax Amsterdam.
After all, the club is famous for its youth work.
For decades, the Ajax Academy with the beautiful name »De Toekomst« (The Future) has been producing one highly talented young player after the next, who will eventually have a great football career around the world and find his future elsewhere.
With almost 30 to the training association
But Tadic came to Ajax in 2018 when he was almost 30 years old, very atypical for club politics.
In fact, his future was already behind him.
A late caller, someone who you knew knew what to do with the ball.
But when you looked at his career so far, you could guess that Tadic had not achieved what all the teenagers in De Toekomst dream of.
Vojvodina Novi Sad, FC Groningen, FC Twente, FC Southampton - that is not necessarily what a footballer imagines a world career to be.
From the Premier League back to the honor division - that is generally considered a step backwards, that is what footballers who want to let their careers run down - like Klaas-Jan Huntelaar, who in his mid-30s closes again after years in Madrid, Milan and Schalke Ajax returned.
Or like Arjen Robben, crowned Champions League, who played his last games with hometown club FC Groningen.
For Tadic, however, it was a dream come true.
"Ajax or nothing," he said to his advisor when he told him about the Dutch interest.
After twelve years as a professional, Dusan Tadic had finally arrived.
Triumphant advance through the Champions League
108 league games followed without a break, followed by the triumph of coach ten Hag's team through the Champions League, a triumph that only ended in the last minute of the semi-final second leg against Tottenham Hotspur in 2019 - and before that with a 4-1 at Real Madrid found its culmination.
An almost ecstatic game in which Tadic was involved in all hits.
Subsequently, the European football media were full of hymns to this »late-discovered fine spirit«, as the »Süddeutsche Zeitung« christened it.
The world marveled at this Ajax team in 2019, and as it is in top football, it did not leave it long in amazement, but the buyers of the top clubs stood in line at Overmars.
Once again a door to a world career opened for Tadic, but others passed through: Hakim Zyiech moved to Chelsea, Donny van de Beek to Manchester United, Frenkie de Jong to FC Barcelona, Mathijs de Ligt to Juventus Turin.
All four of them weren't really happy at the new clubs, Tadic stayed in Amsterdam and found happiness.
The Ajax team around him in 2021 looks even more solid, stronger, even hungrier than the team two years ago, in the league they have now scored a goal difference of 37: 2 in the first eleven games.
In the Champions League, Ajax has scored a total of eleven times in its three wins, striker Sebastian Haller, the former Frankfurter, has twice as many goals with six goals as Wednesday's opponent, Borussia Dortmund (9 p.m. Dazn, live ticker SPIEGEL), in Entirety.
Ajax's 4-0 win over BVB two weeks ago, kicked off by Tadic's free kick, was a magical night for every Ajacied.
Four days later, Ajax humiliated arch-rivals PSV Eindhoven 5-0, Tadic scored his 100th goal in the first division.
The "Algemeen Dagblad" then got intoxicated by the statistics of the 32-year-old: of the 100 goals, the newspaper detailed, he scored 75 with his gifted left foot, 18 with his right, six with his head, and one with "Anything else," whatever that means.
53 templates - just like Suarez
Tadic has already given 53 assists at goals for Ajax, catching up with Luis Suárez, Suárez, one of those who went the normal Ajax path.
Matured to a top player in Amsterdam, became a world star at Liverpool FC, FC Barcelona and now at Atletico.
The reverse Tadic way, so to speak.
Tadic is the game designer, together with his congenial partner, the Brazilian Antony, he determines the rhythm of the team.
His standards are among the best in Europe, he is also dangerous on goals, he can give impulses on the wing as well as in the middle of the game.
Without him, Ajax's brain would be removed.
There was once the famous football phrase "Thomas Müller always plays".
It was said by another Ajax icon, Louis van Gaal, the last coach with whom Amsterdam won the Champions League.
Ten years later the sentence is still valid in Munich, at Ajax it would be: "Dusan Tadic always plays."
