Arne Slot, the best
Erik ten Hag leaves for Manchester United, a year before his contract expires. He was the best trainer of recent years. In an attempt to remain the best club, Ajax is looking for the second best, or rather the best of the future: that could be Arne Slot.
Suppose: Ajax pays 10 million euros to Feyenoord to buy off Arne Slot’s ongoing contract. Is that a lot? Yes. A lot in fact. Although? Bayern Munich paid 25 million euros as a transfer fee to rival RB Leipzig for trainer Julian Nagelsmann. And Ajax paid more than 20 million euros for right winger Antony, while in football they claim that the trainer is the most important official at a club, although he normally has no transfer value.
The football polder will be too small for a while if Ajax actually reports for Slot, because transfers between Feyenoord and Ajax are sensitive, especially now that Slot has only been working at Feyenoord for a year. But with 7, 8 or even 10 million euros, the fairly poor Feyenoord may be able to sign striker Cyriel Dessers, and another player, or start with the renovation of the Kuip. Money can buy almost everything, especially in football, how sad that is in fact.
Slot plays about Ten Hag’s football, with a lot of pressure forward, with guaranteed spectacle. It is wonderful to see Feyenoord play football from time to time, because of the energy and fun in the game. A team with fit players rages across the field, no matter how many duels Feyenoord played with a relatively small selection. Slot even has one advantage over Ten Hag: he is verbally more flexible. Moreover, he can communicate a good balance in top duels, and they want to play a lot of that at Ajax.
With his previous club AZ, he successively won against Feyenoord, PSV and twice against Ajax. He will play the semifinals of the Conference League against Olympique Marseille next week, after an immersive journey through mainly Eastern Europe. He had his best duels with AZ shortly before his forced farewell against Sociedad and Napoli, because AZ sent him away almost a year and a half ago because he talked to Feyenoord.
Suppose that Ajax approaches Slot, then that is different from more than a year ago, because then his contract in Alkmaar expired. At AZ, they could not deal with that, because they did not understand that Slot saw Feyenoord as a bigger club than AZ, just like Ajax is again a bigger club than Feyenoord, especially when it comes to performance.
Ron Jans, the father type
Ron Jans, at 63 years old, is the father figure among Dutch trainers. A man of stature, of strictness in his time and a comforting arm around shoulders. A happy look. His cheeks glow cozily in the sun. Chin up, the slightly too tight jacket around the waist, pen and paper in hand, on which he constantly scribbles notes.
FC Twente is experiencing an exciting season under him and technical director Jan Streuer, with the prospect even of third place, the best ranking since the club rose from the financial ruins of the Joop Munsterman empire. But working for a real top club should be an enticing prospect for a career in which the autumn breeze is coming.
Certainly, Jans also has a scratch on his soul. Two years ago, he received three journalists at his home in Tynaarlo, with music by Velvet Underground as wallpaper for a story about grief and injustice. As a trainer of FC Cincinnati, he had sung along in the locker room to a song by a rapper, with the N-word as a bounce. A vortex of surprise and grief swept him toward the dark exit.
Resigned without honor for misjudging American culture. ‘I am the opposite of a racist’, he said, back in Tynaarlo, barely recovered from the shock.
FC Twente took care of the injured soul. Jans is a man of morality, with original thoughts about society. That fits Ajax, where the moral compass showed strange glitches, due to droning affairs, from the forced departure of Marc Overmars and Quincy Promes, to increasingly affected behavior of players, about which a trainer may sometimes comment. After years of success, Ajax is faltering, to the amusement of everyone who has no heart for the club. A typical biotope for father Jans.
Kasper Hjulmand, the foreigner
The best moment on the Dutch fields this year took place in the Arena: the return of Christian Eriksen in the national team, against the Orange, on March 26, nine months after his cardiac arrest during the European Championship. National coach Kasper Hjulmand looked into the eyes of the midfielder and said, on his substitute: ‘Welcome back. Lots of fun.’
Hjulmand proved to be a great manager of emotions, in every way. In a conversation with de Volkskrant he said about the European Championship, in which the Danes reached the semi-finals as a team of friends: ‘You find your real identity, what matters in life. You discover why you do things and the true values of football: friendship, support, tolerance, hard work, compassion. Everything children learn when they play football. Football sometimes gets too far removed from that identity.’
Sure, he just has a job until the World Cup, with the Danes, but every good coach has a job. Unless Ajax grants Frank de Boer the podium again, the club will probably have to buy out a contract somewhere, as Manchester United did for Ten Hag.
Foreigners are different, with refreshing insights. The Ajax players gloryed in the freedom of Stefan Kovacs in the seventies, after the strictness of Rinus Michels. No matter how many prizes he will leave, the German Roger Schmidt has been a blessing for Dutch football in two years PSV, if only because he sparked discussions about fitness, substitution, solidarity, systems and what more.
Danes and Dutch are a good combination. Danes and Ajax for sure. The 1997 – 1998 season under coach Morten Olsen was unprecedentedly spectacular, with 112 goals in the league and Nikos Machlas as top scorer with 34 goals. Well, a season later the fun was over, partly due to the mutinous De Boer brothers and their desire to leave for Barcelona.
The foreign trainer has perspective at Ajax. Josep Guardiola would be absolutely wonderful, especially because he always speaks so highly of Ajax and is the most loyal follower of Johan Cruijff’s teachings, but then again, men of his stature do not want to go to Amsterdam. It has to be a little realistic. Slot is actually already over the edge.
Alfred Schreuder, the DNA man
Once, at FC Twente, when the club was almost bankrupt, someone deliberately leaked that Alfred Schreuder earned more than seven hundred thousand as head coach. His salary could even increase by a ton. The criticism was devastating, at meager performance. Eight hundred thousand and more is not an issue at Ajax, where top players earn four, five million. Schreuder was Erik ten Hag’s assistant in the most beautiful season of the last 25 years, concluded with the semi-finals of the Champions League in 2019.
Some said that he, the slightly more defensive thinker than Ten Hag, left his mark on the tactics more than the head coach. That’s a bit exaggerated. They were a golden duo, Ten Hag from Oldenzaal and Schreuder from Barneveld, bringers of humility to Amsterdam. At Hoffenheim he was later an assistant to Julian Nagelsmann, from whom he learned a lot. Continuously administer stimuli, to prevent laziness of the brain. Propagating vertical play, high intensity. Exactly what Ajax wants.
Ronald Koeman also asked him as an assistant, at Barcelona, after meeting him during a holiday and becoming fascinated by Schreuder’s knowledge and vision. He is now head coach of Club Brugge. By the way: many more experience experts with Ajax DNA can be mentioned: Peter Bosz (now Olympique Lyon) is possibly in for a sequel to the wonderful, although priceless season 2016-2017. Wim Jonk, once departed with a quarrel from the technical heart that arose from Cruijff’s revolution, rolled out Cruijff’s entire philosophy in Volendam.
Certified trainers such as Michael Reiziger, Winston Bogarde (both now assistant to Ten Hag), John Heitinga (Jong Ajax), Edgar Davids and Clarence Seedorf have the DNA of Ajax, but Ajax will probably appoint an experienced head coach in the search to succeed the best.