The Ajax crisis has reached the bench

These are days of change in Ajax. After his disappointing season, which ended in third place in the Eredivisie which knocked him out of the Champions League for the first time since 2009, Edwin van der Sar resigned on Monday to continue in his position as general manager and today the ‘ajacied’ club announced the decision not to renew the contract of John Heitinga, who sat on the bench in January until the end of the course.

“Ajax informed John Heitinga of that the club is looking for a new coach for the first team”, the Amsterdam entity announced in a statement.

The former Dutch centre-back, who started and ended his career as a player at Ajax, was in charge of the youth team when he took over from Alfred Schreuder, sacked due to poor results which relegated the team to fifth place in the Eredivisie.

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“John came on board at a difficult time to help the club and he did it with full conviction,” highlights Ajax’s director of football, Sven Mislintat, in the statement adding that the club is “very grateful to him”.

Looking for a technician with more experience

“But I came to the conclusion that Ajax now needs a coach with more experience. On a personal level, it was a difficult decision and it was not easy to communicate it to him,” he concluded. Mislitatwho admitted that the march of Erik Tenhag at Manchester United at the end of last season “it was a difficult moment” (Schreuder replaced him) and he does not rule out that Heitinga may speak at the club in other functions.

Heitinga, 39, had a promising debut in managing a professional team, as he He started by winning seven games in a row in the Eredivisie. But Ajax’s trajectory was complicated in February at elimination in the Europa League playoffs against Union Berlin in February and the final third place in the Eredivisie, 13 points behind champions Feyenoord), was the last straw for the team’s difficult season after winning the previous two editions of the Dutch championship.