No matter how far clear a team is at the top of the table heading into the final weeks of a season, football fans around the world know that a title isn't won until it's mathematically won. Never more does that hit home when a team collapses from a seemingly impossible position to hand their rivals the league trophy in the final stretch.
In 2024-25, it is Ajax who have suffered the ignominy of bottling what looked an almost-certain triumph just a few weeks ago. Francesco Farioli's side sat nine points clear of second-placed PSV with just five games of the Eredivisie season remaining, and the vast majority of supporters in the Netherlands already believed that Ajax's name was on the trophy.
However, a run of four games without a win, including heavy defeats to both Sparta Rotterdam and NEC Nijmegen, as well as a draw with 10-man Groningen during which the mid-table side scored a 99th-minute equaliser, suddenly left Ajax a point behind PSV going into the final day. And though Jordan Henderson and co. got back to winning ways against FC Twente, PSV got the victory they needed to secure a title that they had all-but given up on less than two months earlier.
Ajax's collapse, per Opta, is the biggest by any team in European football history, so with that in mind, GOAL has ranked the worst collapses in recent history to have preceded the Dutch giants' remarkable late-season fall...