The ultimate bottle-job! Jordan Henderson and Ajax on the verge of an epic Eredivisie title collapse

Francesco Farioli's side have thrown away a nine-point lead in the space of just four games to now trail PSV going into the final round of matches

It's often argued that winning is the only thing that matters in football, with the implication being that nobody remembers the runners-up. It's simply not true, of course.

Sometimes, the story of a season is not the team that claimed the title, but the one that threw it away. Ask anyone about the 1995-96 Premier League campaign and Kevin Keegan's Newcastle will be the side that immediately comes to mind, while the abiding memory of the 2001-02 Serie A title race is Ronaldo in tears at the Stadio Olimpico as Inter gifted the Scudetto to Juventus.

And who could forget Real Madrid's Galacticos going from first to fourth in La Liga by losing six of their final seven games in 2003-04 - or Steven Gerrard's infamous slip at Anfield a decade later? Botafogo, meanwhile, would never have gotten over their historic Brasileiro collapse in 2023 had they not won both the league and the Copa Libertadores last year. As for Bayer Leverkusen, they became so synonymous with falling at the final hurdle that they were known as 'Neverkusen' until Xabi Alonso came along.

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There's a very real possibility, then, that Ajax's 2024-25 season will forever be remembered for all the wrong reasons, with Francesco Farioli's men now in real danger of adding their name to the list of football's biggest bottle-jobs..

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