Ajax captain Davy Klaassen said his side's 4-0 defeat to Olympique Marseille was a "hard lesson" for the squad.
Ajax were forced to bounce back from a hopeless 2-0 home defeat to Inter, but were dealt a heavy hand when Olympique Marseille handed Ajax their joint-largest away defeat in their UEFA Champions League history.
In a post-game interview with Ziggo Sport, captain Davy Klaassen said that this defeat embodies Ajax's "new reality".
"We at Ajax need to take a good, hard look at ourselves," said Klaassen. "A few years ago, teams like this were far behind us, but now it's the other way around. That's a hard lesson for us to learn."
An overall record loss was avoided after Olympique Marseille took it easy on Ajax in the second half. The visitors, nevertheless, were hopeless going forward and had no control over the game whatsoever.
"We played against a good team. A team like Marseille are currently ahead of Ajax. They let us play until a certain point. We get to the 16, but without really posing a threat."
Ajax manager Johnny Heitinga has been the target of fierce criticism following a disappointing start to the season, and Klaassen admits Ajax are still in the process of making things work under the former Liverpool assistant.
“You want to find out why we are so sloppy. We need to build as a team and try to create more stability. That is a process, and these lows are part of it.”
'Nothing went wrong in the first five minutes'
Fellow midfielder Kenneth Taylor, who led Ajax in shots taken with four, admitted that he didn't enjoy this Champions League night.
"We'll find out soon enough, of course. You know it's going to be a difficult match, and ultimately you'll find out soon enough, and then it will be tough," Taylor said.
"Ultimately, we always have confidence in ourselves, and for the first five minutes, I think nothing is wrong. We knew that's how they played, of course. The ball went to the striker, he passed it on, and they scored immediately."
Ajax employed a high-pressure system with man marking, a tactic that Marseille manager Roberto De Zerbi effectively exploited. According to Taylor, this decision was merely unlucky from Heitinga.
"We had devised a battle plan, but it didn't work out well. Ultimately, football is a game of mistakes, and those mistakes are punished mercilessly. That makes it difficult.”
Any questions about whether or not Ajax should employ a different system went unanswered. "That's up to the coach, of course. But I think you expect something different in every match. Marseille sat very deep and wanted to play one-touch football, like they did for the first goal," Taylor said.
"But anyway, there are always two sides to it, because when we win the ball back, we have a lot of space there."
Ajax continue their season in the Dutch Eredivisie with an away game at Sparta Rotterdam on Saturday, October 4th, at 16.30 CET.