One of the giants of Dutch football is still shaking. Ajax, for the second year in a row, is haunted, if not by scandals, then by managerial breaks and the loss of outstanding players.
The bad run began last February, when the club’s general manager, the legendary Edwin van der Sar, after ten years of working together, had to fire the equally legendary footballer and -in combination- a friend, Mark Overmars , who worked more than successfully as a sports director. And despite the fact that, according to one of the owners of Ajax, Overmars was the best football director in the club’s history, they could not forgive him for his involvement in the harassment scandal. Mark took this dismissal very badly: in December, the 49-year-old former midfielder suffered a minor stroke and is still in hospital.
And this summer, the “children of God” had to go through another break: after five years of work, head coach Eric ten Hag announced that he was leaving the team, explaining his decision due to fatigue and disappointment in the club. His position was taken by Alfred Schreuder, a former assistant to ten Hag, who also managed to work as Ronald Koeman’s assistant in Barcelona and, in January 2022, lead Club Brugge and lead it to the championship. Under Schreuder’s guidance, Ajax started the season strongly: 29 points in 11 Eredivisie games. However, something broke in November: 6 draws and 1 loss in 7 straight games. Nor did it work in the Champions League. The club went to the Europa League, where in February it will meet the Berlin “Union”. The final straw was a home draw with Volendam, a 16th place team in the Dutch championship. Ajax’s unbeaten run in the Eredivisie reached seven games, the last time the club showed such a record break was in 1965.
In general, it was impossible to do without the dismissal of Alfred Schreuder:
– We had a good start in the new season, but then the team began to lose points, and our results could hardly be called stable. We thought that the World Cup break would help us recover, but we did not see an improvement in the situation, – Edwin van der Sar explained the club’s decision.
Now the top Dutch talent forge, where Johan Cruyff, Marco van Basten, Frank de Boer and Edgar Davids have honed their skills over the years, will have to pull their hair out to minimize the points gap with the leaders of the Eredivisie, Feyenoord. Without thinking twice, the Ajax board decided to entrust this mission to one of its students and past award-winning players, a veteran of the national team, John Heitinga, who has coached the Ajax youth team since 2017. Although the defender did not promises great things: Heitinga took over the team so far only until the end of the season. But, judging by the way he confidently led Ajax to the game with Excelsior, defeating the opponent with a score of 4:1, the team has a good chance to regain its leading positions and save the season.
It is curious that with the appointment of John Heiting as head coach of the first team, Ajax again formed the well-known trio of players from the Dutch national team in the past: Edwin van der Sar, Claes-Jan Huntelar (he entered the management of the club this spring) and Heitinga. True, the last time these players together defended the colors of the national team, the Oranje managed to beat the Russian team with a score of 1:3. Let’s hope that this time the interaction of legendary football players will lead to more positive results.
