Marc Overmars would also have been guilty of transgressive behavior towards players of Ajax Women. Overmars resigned as director of football affairs at Ajax in February because he had sent inappropriate messages and dick pics to several female colleagues.
Two former players of Ajax Women say to The watchword that Overmars felt a player lying on the massage table in the physio room. According to the women, another player was present. “He dismissed it as a joke, but it was not polite,” one of the women told the newspaper. According to the women, Overmars would have entered the space more often, despite being seen as safe space because sometimes women don’t wear a shirt or pants.
Flirt material
A third former player tells the newspaper that she knew that a few players had experiences with Overmars that were not right. The three women all wish to remain anonymous. Marjan Olfers, the professor of sports and law who is often involved in research into cross-border behavior in sport, tells the newspaper that she has indicated that players at Ajax also suffered from Overmars’ cross-border behavior.
Merel van Dongen, Ajax player from 2015 to 2018, says she has no negative experiences with Overmars. She does say that he sometimes made comments “that made you think: not so neat, not professional. He saw us not only as employees, but also as flirt material.”
Rumor
When Overmars resigned in February, it was believed that only Ajax support staff had experienced undesirable behaviour. In May said former Ajax player Daphne Koster that Overmars’ behavior was also known to the women’s team. Koster did not say at the time whether she or other players had had to deal with that behaviour.
Overmars was appointed as sporting director at the Belgian Royal Antwerp more than a month after his departure from Ajax. Through a spokesperson for that club, he informed Het Parool that he did not want to respond to the alleged incident in the physio room.
Other former Ajax players tell the newspaper that they do not know the story, which would date from the first years of Overmars as director, or at most as a rumor. Ajax itself tells the newspaper “not to answer questions about individual (groups of) women who have had to deal with transgressive behaviour.”