When it comes to European fixtures that carry a certain amount of weight, you would probably think of matchups such as Real Madrid against Bayern Munich or Liverpool against Juventus. Ajax versus Celtic probably doesn’t occupy quite the same category in the popular imagination, yet the two clubs have a history stretching back more than five decades.
It is a battle that is a rather more substantive one than the numbers alone might suggest. That is thanks to the fact that the teams met when they were both vying to be the best clubs in Europe, later clashing in the qualifying rounds of what had become the Champions League.
The First Encounter
The two sides share something of a parallel track through the game’s history, in the sense that they both won their respective domestic leagues with sufficient regularity to be near-permanent fixtures in the old European Cup, both lifting that trophy in the 1960s. Both teams also managed to do so with squads composed almost entirely of players from their own country. The biggest difference is that Ajax followed their 1971 triumph by winning two more in succession, whilst Celtic’s Lisbon Lions vintage of 1967 remains the club’s solitary European Cup triumph, although they did come close to repeating the trick three years later.
Ajax won the 1970-71 European Cup, which was the first of their three consecutive titles in that competition. They had to get past Celtic in the quarter-finals in order to get that win on the board, however. The first-leg took place in Amsterdam in the March of 1971, with goals from Cruyff, Hulshoff and Keizer giving the Dutch side a 3-0 win in front of a crowd of around 65,000. The second-leg was played at Hampden Park, with Celtic having moved the game to accommodate demand, seeing 90,000 tickets sold. That ended 1-0 to the home side, but the damage had been done in Amsterdam, meaning that Ajax went through 3-1 on aggregate.
In some ways, that tie was something of a statement of where European football was heading. In many ways, Celtic were a shadow of the side that had won the competition just three years before, with Jimmy Johnstone later saying that he couldn’t have seen Celtic beating Ajax at that time. That was thanks to the fact that Johan Cruyff was running the show, setting the football world alight with his skill with the ball at his feet. It was an education for the Scottish side, but one that they have failed to build on in any meaningful way ever since. Ajax weren’t in the tournament in 1969-70, with Celtic instead losing the final to another Dutch side in Feyenoord.
Eleven Years Later
The clubs were kept apart for over a decade before being drawn against one another once again, this time in the first round of the 1982-83 European Cup. By then, Ajax were a rather different proposition, no longer being the continental force that they had been in the Cruyff era. The tie remains one of the more remarkable in Celtic’s European history, thanks to the fact that the first-leg at Celtic Park finished 2-2, with Johan Cruyff and Jesper Olsen scoring for the visitors. Goals from Charlie Nicholas and Frank McGarvey levelled the tie for the home side, giving them hope in the second-leg.
In Amsterdam, Celtic won 2-1, with Nicholas scoring the first and George McCluskey netting a dramatic late winner after Cruyff had been forced off through injury, sending the Scottish side through 4-3 on aggregate. Sadly, the heroics of more than a decade earlier couldn’t be repeated for Celtic, who lost 3-2 on aggregate to Real Sociedad. The Spanish side would themselves go on to lose to eventual winners Hamburger SV in the semi-final, so Ajax supporters could at least console themselves with the knowledge that they were unlikely to make it very far in the tournament, even if they had been able to make it past the Scots.
The Modern Era
It was the August of 2001 that pitted the sides up against one another for the first time in the rebranded Champions League, this time in the third round of the qualifying stage. That was seen as pretty much the trickiest tie that Celtic could have got at the time, but they made light work of Ajax out in the Netherlands thanks to a 3-1 win in the first-leg. The second-leg did see Ajax restore some pride thanks to a 1-0 win at Celtic Park, but the damage had already been done and the Dutch side went crashing out with a 3-2 aggregate loss. It then took more than a decade before the clubs met again competitively.
@willie.collowAjax 1 Celtic 3 – 2001♬ original sound – Willie Collow
This time, the matchup came in the group stage of the 2013-14 Champions League. Celtic won the home leg 2-1 in the October of 2013, before Ajax gained some revenge with a 1-0 win at the Johan Cruyff ArenA in the November. Neither side particularly distinguished themselves in that campaign, with Celtic coming bottom of the group and Ajax falling down to the Europa League. The clubs then crossed paths in the Europa League during the 2015-16 campaign, again in the group stage. A 2-2 draw in Amsterdam in the September was followed by a 2-1 Ajax win at Celtic Park in the November, but both teams failed to make it out of the group.
Ajax v Celtic H2H Record
| Competition | Ajax Wins | Draws | Celtic Wins | Ajax Goals | Celtic Goals |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| European Cup | 1 | 1 | 2 | 6 | 5 |
| Champions League | 2 | 0 | 2 | 4 | 5 |
| Europa League | 1 | 1 | 0 | 4 | 3 |
Across all competitive meetings, Ajax hold the edge overall thanks to their five wins to Celtic’s four, as well as a single draw. The ten games have produced 17 goals for Ajax and nine for Celtic.
The most recent competitive encounter was in 2015, though the clubs met in a pre-season friendly in the July of 2025, with Ajax winning 5-1.