We need a place to talk about the Ajax USA website... A guy's gotta be able to toot his own horn once in a while, right?

I saw a sign in the Arena, during the television broadcast of Ajax - Feyenoord, that AjaxFotoSide.nl has turned 5 years old. That's a great achievement, and we are running a brief congratulation message on our home page right now for the dedicated folks at AFS.

Ajax USA had a gradual beginning... Did you know that we actually started as a faxed newsletter? Cutting edge, baby... I used to collect news summaries off the ill-fated Ajax Listserv, and statistics and the league table off Dutch Teletekst, and actually fax these text only documents around to a small group of information-starved Ajacieden in the U.S. Eventually, I abandoned faxes in favor of this new Web thing, and although I was making an Ajax news web page of some form as early as 1994, I trace the real beginning of the site to 1995, when I began publishing a "permanent" site under the name Ajax USA, with the now-outdated motto, "for the love of Ajax in America."

Over the years, we've had a few thousand registered "members" in over 20 countries and literally millions of visitors (though we suspect many of those are the accumulation of a small band of dedicated Ajacieden -- and we're talking about you, Ben!).

The single most important development in the short history of our site is that our Editor, Menno Pot, took an interest. Over the past several years, Menno has written literally VOLUMES of original and translated content for our site. If you havent' been reading his History of Ajax, his 15 Years Ago installments, and his translation of Simon Kuper's Ajax, de Joden, Nederland, not to mention countless match reports and news stories, well, what have you been reading? Menno also brought us our other long-serving staff member, Senior Writer Bastiaan Vercouteren. Without these two guys, there simply would be no Ajax USA today. You should come to Amsterdam with us in February just for the honor of buying these two guys a drink.

Recently, we've begun to notice that other websites are picking up on some of our original content, which is gratifying but a bit unnerving. So it's extremely pleasing to see that when Soccer365 has the good taste to use Ajax USA material in their story about Rafael van der Vaart's goal against Feyenoord, they also had the class to credit us as the source. Hats off to you, Soccer365!

Apologies all around for this long-winded post. I just got to thinking about this stuff, and felt like gushing a bit.

I hope a long life to www.ajaxusa.com and all his followers.

I remember when I first found the page. I was first annoyed that you didn't have any of the "latest stories" (read: gossip, silly-season rumours etc.) but gradually began to understand that the site was about quality! I was able to read top quality match-reports, and in English! As the interest grew I started to read the History section and also about the web-page itself (policies rule!).

My first, very cocky, attempt at contributing myself was somewhere in september or october 2002, when signing in the old forum (greenspun) for the first time. The topic was Zlatan's performances and it gradually slipped into some sort of debate about no9 in the classic Ajax total-football. I can say that I wasn't ready for the answers I recieved! I can't remember who knocked me down that first time but mr vak425 isn't a wild guess is it?

Anyways, I just felt I should share my view of the site, which to my liking and knowledge is the absolutely best English (the language that is) website about Ajax.

Thanks, and keep up the good work!

I also want to give my 'Thank you' for the AjaxUSA site. The one thing I really like (apart from Per's comments and these great people on the forum) is that the site is so very clean. No extra shit. Just good stories and news.

Hats of for you guys who do this without any money involved, but just for your love for Ajax and it's fans!

Cheers guys!

to Ajax-USA.Best damned site on the web that doesn't include Latina Chicks.But seriously, Number 1 on my favorites list. Always informative and never dull. A long way from the days,pre-computer, when I'd take a trip to Bermuda with family and ,while everyone else had normal souvenirs ,I'd be loaded down with footie mags,bless the Brits for keeping their commonwealth well stocked, the better to follow footie in general and AJAX in particular. And,getting decidely sappy, bless Ajax-USA for bringing me keyboard to keyboard(and occasionally face to face) with a great bunch of ladies and gents.

Just to add this is the best site on the web. Thanks to this site I have had the pleasure of meeting Menno and several regular fans in our pre-season visit to UK and plan to get to Amsterdam before the end of the season.

Keep up the Great work.

Cheers to Ajax USA and all its staff. Since its inception it has been the best Ajax English site on the Internet. If we look at quality it is probably the only site. It has given us English speaking Ajax fans a new opportunity to read about Ajax and to talk in the forum with other fans. Long live AjaxUsa.

What a lot of crawlers - the website is bloody awful - always has been and always will be if it stays in the hands of bloody foreigners. They wont even invade, when you want them to

Joking aside, I think that the website has always had so much going for it and like our dear old Winston Churchill said after the Battle of Britain (and I am not talking about an Arse/ManUre game here) - we owe so much to so few. The guys at Ajax-USA towers do a fantastic job.
The greatest thing though is the friendships that have been formed during this time - you never know it may well go a long way in beginning to heal the mistrust that exists between France and England .
Absolutely fantastic.

Few questions for you though Webmaster -

(1) What was the first thread and post

(2) What was the most hilarious thread and post

(3) What was the best (or worse depending on your point of view) groupie message for Chivu

(4) What has happened to A Minute With Ben Bell

(5) What was the last thread and post before we migrated to Soccerpages.

Geez, I had no idea there would be a test today -- I would've studied...

Seriously, I'm only going to attempt an answer to some of your questions:

(2) What was the most hilarious thread and post:

Many candidates. Some of you may recall the "Hungarian Hooligan" who guaranteed that his no-name crap club would trash Ajax in some European competition (er, they didn't) and would assault me personally. I'm still waiting...

The "Dumb things Christian Miles said" thread was one of my personal faves...

But the Mido Stalkers thread(s) were probably the most entertaining, day in day out.

(4) What has happened to A Minute With Ben Bell

You'll have to ask Ben. The pressure of a recurring deadline seemed to drive him into sackcloth and ashes under a bridge embankment somewhere. I think we have to be satisfied with Ben's unfailingly hilarious but random posts to the bboards. Of course, if Mr. Bell ever wants to write a guest column to his own column, I'd welcome him with open arms.

It's because I have no writing style,suffer from writer's block without showing ability to write, am overly verbose,pompous, and a right wanker(as opposed to a left wanker I guess)! hugs and kisses.I love you all. Now SOD OFF!

Are there any "A minute with Ben Bell" available on ajaxusa?

Will go searchin right now...

Am I the only one who can't reach Ajax USA at the moment, or is the website temporarily down...?

(That's Tuesday 23 December, approximately 11:00 AM CET).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by AFCA 1900
Am I the only one who can't reach Ajax USA at the moment, or is the website temporarily down...?

(That's Tuesday 23 December, approximately 11:00 AM CET).

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by Vak425
Appears OK now.

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Yup, it's back.