Ajax is at a risky point for the semi-final against Feyenoord – everyone wants to prevent another failed transfer summer

He emphasized it in his job interview, and now Pier Eringa is doing it again. “What is currently very vulnerable at Ajax is that the football axis is so thin in an administrative sense,” says the Frisian director, from behind a white lectern with the club logo.

He loves the stage, and he gets it, this Tuesday morning in mid-March. In a room of the Johan Cruijff Arena, the listed club is holding an extraordinary shareholders’ meeting for the appointment of Eringa as chairman of the supervisory board. He succeeds Leen Meijaard, who is thanked with a large bunch of flowers for his efforts.

Eringa, former CEO of rail manager ProRail, is in a hurry. He wants “firmness and clarity” about the trainer, the technical director and the football commissioner. “I think we have to make sure that we, together with the management, get that axis in order very quickly.” The supervisory board is looking for a new football commissioner “as hell”, he promises. And the management, led by Edwin van der Sar, is instructed to “take it up a notch if possible”.

That extra gear is needed, now that Ajax is at a similar, risky point as a year ago. In the spring of 2022, after the sudden departure of Marc Overmars, no new director of football affairs was found, after which the club management lost control of the transfer policy. Unusually, an agent was hired as a transfer policy adviser, players were bought without extensive scouting reports.

Read also: a reconstruction of the Ajax policy after Overmars’ departure. The club came in a permanent state of crisis management

The club, eliminated in Europe and tied for second in the Eredivisie, is still feeling the consequences of that turbulent transfer summer. The national title seems out of sight. The season can still get a little shine with the KNVB Cup, in which Feyenoord awaits in the semi-final on Wednesday evening.

More worrying than the disappointing sporting performance is that Ajax is still errant administratively. There had to be clarity about a new director of football affairs within two months, said general manager Van der Sar in a talk show at the beginning of February Rondo. Wishful thinking, as it turns out. Two months later, no one has been appointed. Top candidate Julian Ward has dropped out, wrote The Telegraph Friday.

Even about who exactly is responsible for the search for a new director of football affairs, opinions differ in the top of Ajax. “In itself, that is a task of the supervisory board, which appoints the management,” said Van der Sar at Rondo.

“This is a job for the management,” Eringa said in a talk show at the end of March On 1. In the regulations the supervisory board also states that ‘the selection of possible new members of the management board’ is ‘prepared and coordinated’ by the supervisory board.

Technical director ‘new style’

Yet there is something of a pattern in all the administrative chaos, at least when it comes to what Ajax is looking for. Now that Ward has canceled, fifty-year-old German Sven Mislintat is the most important candidate to succeed Overmars. These two names reveal that Ajax is betting on a ‘new style’ technical director.

Neither has a past as a professional football player. Mislintat and Ward laid the foundation for their football knowledge in college, one as a sports science student at the University of Bochum (Mislintat) and the other in Liverpool (Ward). Not experience and intuition, but data and scientific insights are leading for Mislintat and Ward.

Mislintat started as a scout at Borussia Dortmund in 2006, at a time when the club was virtually bankrupt. In the decade that followed – in 2009 he was promoted to Chief Scout – Mislintat made a name for himself as one of the key players in the club’s resurrection, culminating in reaching the Champions League final in 2013.

Using data analysis software he developed with a few business partners, Mislintat discovered future stars like Robert Lewandowski and Ousmane Dembélé. It earned the scout a transfer to Arsenal in 2017, but his short stay in London was not a success. The same can be said of the 3.5 years that Mislintat was then technical director at VfB Stuttgart.

If he signs with Ajax, it means a break in style for Ajax in several respects, which traditionally opts for people with a past at the club in this position, preferably as a footballer. Overmars, with almost two hundred matches in Ajax’s first team, was an exponent of that tradition. He is seen within the club as the founder of the international successes of recent years and praised for his network, nose for talent and qualities as a dealmaker.

But Overmars was also elusive and soloistic: he did little or no reporting. Above all, he was not a manager, despite the fact that he was in charge of 225 employees in a variety of technical departments (such as scouting, medical, data analysis). Under Overmars, there was a lack of cohesion in the organization, was a frequently heard criticism within the club.

To professionalise the organization and to lighten the portfolio of technical director, Ajax created a new management position last year, the chief sports officer, now filled by Maurits Hendriks (former NOC-NSF). For the position of technical director, the club was looking for a transfer specialist who communicates easily, can provide leadership and has an international network. A profile that few candidates fit, it turned out.

Difficult choices

A new director will have to make difficult decisions in the short term. Who will be the coach in the new season? Who will form the heart of the team? Remains captain Dusan Tadic (34) the defining player? What to do when key players such as Mohammed Kudus and Edson Alvarez leave? What to do with long-term and expensively paid contracts of underperforming players such as Owen Wijndal (2027), Jorge Sánchez (2026) and Brian Brobbey (2027)? How does the high player budget (74 million last season) relate to the possible loss of the Champions League?

The technical organization that the director has to lead is also surrounded by question marks. The support team that Overmars relied on has since fallen apart. Technical manager Gerry Hamstra left on Monday. Henk Veldmate has recently retired as chief scout and also seems to be on his way to the exit, Klaas Jan Huntelaar (technical manager in training) is now responsible for this department.

In the preparatory press conference for the semi-final against Feyenoord, interim coach John Heitinga said that he also needs clarity. “Make a choice,” he said, including about his own staying on. “A right or a wrong one, but make one.” He prefers to remain head coach, but then he wants to put together his own group of players and technical staff. Heitinga: “You can feel the unrest. It’s time for clarity for everyone. I think that’s the most important thing.”