Four-time European champions have been plunged into crisis this season, with the sordid exit of Marc Overmars last year a key factor.
Director of Football Affairs Marc Overmars will leave Ajax with immediate effect,” began the late-night statement on the club’s official website.
It was February 6, 2022. Earlier that day, Ajax, via a routine home victory over Heracles, had opened-up a five-point gap at the Eredivisie’s summit. A third-successive title was in sight. Many in the Netherlands believed the club was in the early throes of a dominant period. The Dutch Bayern Munich.
Overmars, who won three titles and the Champions League as an Ajax player before spells at Arsenal and Barcelona, had been in post since 2012. He had, alongside chief executive Edwin van der Sar, overseen footballing operations since 2017.
That included appointing Erik ten Hag, and they helped shape a side that went within Lucas Moura’s injury-time effort of a Champions League Final. But it emerged that Overmars had sent explicit photographs to at least one female staff member from the bathrooms of club offices. He had to go.
A series of inappropriate messages sent to several female colleagues over an extended period of time underlies his decision to leave the club,” the official release continued.
It would be too simplistic to point to Overmars’s departure as the sole reason for Ajax’s freefall. But it was hugely significant. They won the title a few months later, and then Ten Hag left for Manchester United that summer. Both Lisandro Martínez and Antony followed him. Ryan Gravenberch and top scorer Sébastien Haller were sold too.
Managers come and go and Ten Hag was always likely to move. What became apparent though, was a lack of future-proofing or succession planning.
Alfred Schreuder replaced Ten Hag but was gone by January. Under interim coach John Heitinga, the former Everton defender, Ajax finished third in the table and failed to secure a Champions League place. A jaded Van der Sar retired, although not before appointing Sven Mislintat to the head coach role. Overmars, some 15 months after his departure, had finally been replaced.
Mislintat had enjoyed success as Borussia Dortmund’s chief scout during Jürgen Klopp’s tenure but was less well thought of during his time at Arsenal. Most recently, he had been with Stuttgart. He is data driven, a modern operator. But he was not an Ajax man, nor had he played at the highest level. The late Johan Cruyff would not have approved.
