Matthew Childs/Reuters
AMSTERDAM — A single minute remained, maybe less. Maybe just a few seconds separated Ajax from the Champions League final. Somehow, even as the energy drained from their legs and the tension gripped their minds, this team that glimpses the future and echoes the past, had clung on.
It had resisted everything Tottenham Hotspur could muster. It had steadied itself after throwing away a carefully constructed two-goal lead in the space of four minutes. It had maintained its poise even as it stood on the high wire, aware that a single slip might give Spurs a third away goal, the advantage, the tie.