Ajax coach John Heitinga was never freed from the spirit of predecessor Farioli

John Heitinga, the Ajax coach fired on Thursday, hates looking back. He thinks it is “wasted energy” to dwell on events that have happened, he said shortly after his return to the club. After all, he can’t change anything anymore. Of course, he would also encounter “obstacles” in his new role, but he wanted to put them behind him as quickly as possible. “I mainly want to move forward.”

Heitinga (41) started talking about it because he immediately wanted to tackle something. During his first public appearance after his appointment, at the beginning of July at an Ajax training camp in Zeist, it was not about the last time he was the club’s trainer, in the spring of 2023, as a replacement for the dismissed Alfred Schreuder. Not about his sporting achievements at the time, not about what he had learned at the time, and not about his forced departure after just five months.

Just as that afternoon it was not supposed to be about his predecessor, the Italian Francesco Farioli, who had brought Ajax back to the brink of the national championship in one season from a deep sporting crisis. That was worth a “great compliment”, Heitinga thought. “Only: I want to move forward, also in this.” So he hadn’t sat down with Farioli to ask him about players, his approach or his findings. To a follow-up question: “I hear the name Farioli a lot here, but it is no longer there.”

Heitinga had been brought in to outflank Farioli, Marijn Beuker, the football director, explained on the club channels during the same training camp. The Italian had brought the ‘organisation’ back to Ajax, but was also frequently accused that his playing style was too defensive, not ‘of Ajax’. It is up to his successor to play football in a stable manner as well as beautifully. It needed to be something “sparkling more often,” said technical director Alex Kroes in the same video.

Instead of moving forward, Ajax has taken a big step back under Heitinga

But instead of moving forward, Ajax has taken a big step back under Heitinga. Defensively the team is extremely vulnerable, but offensively it often looks powerless. In the Champions League, the team is at the bottom of the group after four matches, while in the Eredivisie the team has already lost thirteen points.

The confidence that Heitinga will find a solution for this has now evaporated. On Thursday afternoon, a day after the 3-0 home defeat against Galatasaray, the inevitable news came: Ajax immediately put Heitinga on hold. His contract, which ran until mid-2027, is terminated. Assistant coach Marcel Keizer is also said goodbye. Fred Grim, recently added as an assistant to help Heitinga, will take over for the time being. In the meantime, Ajax is looking for a new head coach.

“We see too little development and we have unnecessarily lost points,” says technical director Alex Kroes in a press release. Heitinga’s farewell also means the exit of Kroes himself. He is making his position available immediately, but according to the statement, the other members of the board of directors and the supervisory board have “emphatically” requested him to “stay on for the sake of continuity in the near future.” Kroes’ contract expires at the end of this season.

Offensive football

From his first days it was clearly visible how much Heitinga wanted to do things differently than his predecessor. The new trainer wanted to be “intense”, he said at his first public appearance. By this he meant: unlike Farioli, putting a lot of pressure in defense, winning the ball close to the opponent’s goal. And when in possession of the ball, immediately look for attack, cross the field with courage, quick combinations and feats.

Yet Ajax rarely succeeded in this. The pressure football that Heitinga wanted to play requires timing, insight into the game and running ability. If an attacker rushes, the rest of the team must also cover. But at Ajax this often faltered, which meant that opponents could easily play under pressure and the defense was completely open. A matter of “patterns”, which take time to become established, according to the trainer.

Even in possession of the ball, Heitinga was still looking for a way to get a grip on midfield after four months. In particular, the use of ‘the six’, the controlling midfielder where the build-up begins, remained a problem. Heitinga tried it with Davy Klaassen, Jorthy Mokio, Youri Regeer and James McConnell and Kian Fitz-Jim, among others. None managed to convince like Jordan Henderson, who left this summer.

In the first matches, the former footballer was given the benefit of the doubt, but opinion soon turned against him. Because he had difficulty expressing himself in press conferences and rarely succeeded in explaining his ideas. What did not contribute to confidence were the sometimes downright clumsy slippers. Such as when he sent winger Raúl Moro into the field in the European match against Inter, but did not tell the Spaniard which flank he should play on.

But Heitinga perhaps turned out to be most vulnerable at times when he had to make adjustments during matches. His predecessor Farioli seemed to approach this almost as an exact science: in addition to a battle plan, he thought in advance about all possible adjustments that his opponent could make during matches. He always had an answer ready. Heitinga’s approach was often limited to replacing one player with another.

Letting go was also the ambition to still play football ‘des Ajax’. In their own Arena, Ajax wanted to do everything they could against Galatasaray to finally get rid of that “horrid zero” in Europe, Heitinga said beforehand. But once on the field, little of the promise of beautiful, attacking football was visible anymore. Just as Ajax collapsed deep into its own half against SC Heerenveen a few days earlier.

The reaction of captain Davy Klaassen, shortly after the 3-0 defeat, in front of the cameras of Ziggo Sports. The patterns and consistency that the coach and his team were looking for were still “insufficient” after all these months, he thought. “We cannot manage to improve our game. You sometimes see us playing well for fifteen minutes or half an hour, but that is not good enough.”

Give a gift





Part





Email the editor