Is there actually anyone who is allowed or wants to stay with Ajax? Everyone leaves, voluntarily or not. The board, the trainer, the assistant trainers, the scouts, the only good players (only two) and now also general manager Edwin van der Sar. Feyenoord and PSV need not worry for the time being. Before Ajax has things in order again, we will be two seasons further.
‘Actually’ I wrote in the opening sentence, a word that is usually superfluous, but in this case consider it an ode to Van der Sar, for whom it was his favorite word. He would have said: “Is there actually anyone who is actually allowed or wants to stay with Ajax? Not really.”
If his vocabulary wasn’t his fortress, what were his strengths? That will always remain unclear. He experienced an impressive heyday with Ajax, but as soon as his co-director Marc Overmars was forced to leave, the general decline started. An unavoidable question: to whom was this flourishing actually due? Actually to Overmars?
Van der Sar was appointed as director through the intercession of Johan Cruijff, who believed that football clubs and football associations should be led by former football players. A questionable starting point, as was already apparent from the fact that as soon as Cruijff interfered with Ajax at an administrative level, the chaos became even greater. Former football players are usually only suitable as TV analysts, even if they (Van der Vaart, Van Basten, Sneijder) are sometimes too lazy for that.
Be that as it may, Van der Sar was in charge of the club as the 2022 transfer summer began – two, three months in which the first team was pretty much broken down to the bottom. The best players were sold and the replacements attracted with exorbitant amounts turned out to be unsuccessful.
It is a pity that Cruijff has not been able to experience that former top football players sometimes have great difficulty distinguishing bad football players from good football players. Wine valley? Brobbey? Bassy? Sanchez? Mountain wine? Let them frolic for half an hour, and even a layman will see their weaknesses. Wijndal can’t defend, Brobbey can’t head, Bassey can’t pass and Sanchez can’t do anything. Bergwijn, the most expensive purchase (31 million)? After that half hour, talk to him and you will notice that he lacks the fanaticism of the true top athlete.
Van der Sar didn’t notice it all – and that’s why he has to go now. Justifiably. But shortly before his departure he signed for the biggest blunder of the club: the fiddling around the honoring of the Ajax women. I would be very hypocritical if I claimed to be a passionate spectator of women’s football, but that is not relevant here. Champions should be honored, period. Whether they are male or not.
That could have been done on Leidseplein, including an endearing balcony scene in which mayor Halsema was not pelted by male Ajax miscreants for once.
But the Ajax leadership preferred to come up with ridiculous excuses to get out of their duty and to please ‘the hard core’ of misogynistic supporters.
Women’s football was the only area in which Ajax excelled last season. Van der Sar and his colleagues should have realized that. Actually.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper on May 31, 2023.