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LONDON. – Marc Overmars believes the spirit of Johan Cruyff will be with Ajax for their Europa League soccer final showdown with Manchester United tonight. A year after legend Cruyff ’s death, former Ajax and Arsenal stars Overmars and Dennis Bergkamp have helped build a team at his first club that meets the legendary Dutchman’s football philosophy.

United’s opponents in Stockholm tonight are young, technically gifted and full of attacking spirit.

Overmars, now the Amsterdam club’s director of player affairs, said: “It was Johan Cruyff who asked us to take over and start building a new team. It was called the silk revolution.

“With the help of former team-mates like Edwin van der Sar, Frank de Boer and Wim Jonk, Dennis and I wanted to achieve again what we had achieved as players here.

“Our aim was to win the Europa League first, as the financial gap with the big clubs in the Champions League is way too big. In our time as players it was possible to bridge that gap.

“The budgets of the other clubs were a few times bigger, not five or 10 times bigger. At Ajax we work with a players budget of £18million. The majority of the big clubs in Europe have player budgets of more than £100m.”

Overmars compares the job Cruyff’s clan have done to cars. The cost of the Ajax team may look like a Mini, but they have a limousine engine.

He explained: “We’re performing like a Mercedes. Every time we have lunch with the board members of other clubs, they fall off their chairs when they hear about how little money we spend.”

Ajax have £100m in the bank, yet will not spend it on players. If they go into the transfer market, Overmars acts like a second-hand car dealer.

“I felt sorry for our old coach, Frank de Boer, at times. He won us four titles in a row and he laid the foundations,” he said.

“After winning another championship he would ask for one or two really good players to improve. We told him his targets were too expensive. Yet he never moaned. He just got on with his job of building a new team with kids.”

Overmars does not camouflage the fact that Cruyff could be difficult. They did not speak for a while, but were reconciled before his death. – The Mirror.