'The situation was so strange!' - What is going on at calamity club Ajax after terrible start to the season?

The 2023/24 Eredivisie campaign has been notable so far for the dismal start made by Ajax. The 36-time champions sit in the relegation zone after seven games, having amassed just five points, which has led to fan protests and the sacking of manager Maurice Steijn, with former Ajax player Hedwiges Maduro taking the reins in the interim.

With the Dutch giants in a state of flux and after such a poor start to the domestic campaign, Eurosport Netherlands' Kevin van Nunen shares his thoughts on what's gone wrong and what might lie ahead...

Two or three years ago several newspapers asked the question: Have Ajax outgrown the Eredivisie? Are Ajax the Dutch Bayern Munich, will they win 10 titles in a row? I always answered no to this question, because what happens now, even if somewhat exaggerated, is just very, very typically Ajax…

Do you know the Icarus story? Ajax simply have flown too close to the sun and everything fell apart. The club wanted to challenge the European top clubs, but as history shows, not one smaller club is able to sustain this challenge on the long term. FC Porto couldn't, Valencia couldn't, a lot of other clubs were unable to.

Ajax is pretty much comparable with AS Monaco. Good youth, sometimes good transfers, sometimes the right trainer at the right moment, enjoy success, get robbed of your best (homegrown) players, then sooner or later a moment arrives when the youth academy cannot fill the gaps anymore… and then the big collapse.

Exactly this is what happened at Ajax. A setback was always going to happen after the departure of Erik ten Hag (and to a lesser extent Marc Overmars as well). One has to wonder: was Ten Hag a hit thanks to the club’s vision or was it a stroke of luck? If you look at the big picture before and after, at least the recent success can be traced back for a big, big part to one of the best upcoming managers in Europe.

Erik ten Hag simply did a marvellous job, helped by good youth players and some success/good policy in the transfer market. Don’t forget though, even the success rate of Marc Overmars was about 50/50.

So no, Ajax has not outgrown the Eredivisie and is certainly not the Dutch Bayern Munich. Far from!

The problem is both institutional and sporting. Despite the success of Overmars and Ten Hag a good structure was never in place. Overmars was a kind of lone wolf (in a positive sense). I mean, after his sudden departure, there was no successor, there was no right hand who could take over, nothing of Overmars’ vision was documented, no workflow was in place, his agreements with players and agents were a complete unknown.

Ajax needed the help of Dusan Tadic, his agent to do deals on the transfer market last summer. Not the best deals… as a result no good or balanced squad was composed and Ajax missed out on a Champions League ticket for the first time since 2018. This was always going to happen sometime, sooner or later, but Ajax just wasn’t prepared.

Ajax bought Steven Bergwijn for €30 million. They never should have. Bergwijn is not worth this amount of money, he has been struggling for years at Spurs and the national team. They never should have paid that price. Right now, he is captain simply because no-one better is available.

Because of missing out on CL football, newly appointed technical director Sven Mislintat was told to cut back on salaries and transfer sums, which is exactly what he did. Did he do a goob job? There is room for improvement, that’s for sure. Did he do a bad job? Even with this material, Ajax should compete for a top three spot at least.

Because of some bad internal behavior Mislintat has been sacked already, which is a shame in some sense, because he wanted to modernise departments like scouting, but he experienced a lot of head wind from his first day at the club.

Klaas Jan Huntelaar was lined up for the longer term as a potential technical director, but unfortunately, he suffered a burn out and will be out of action for some time. How long? Nobody knows. Maybe he will not return in his current role, maybe he will never become technical director. At the moment, his priority is obviously to take a good rest and get healthy again. I hope he gets well (soon).

The situation was so, so, so strange… I really can’t comprehend it! At the beginning, Steijn was appointed by Mislintat as he was regarded as an ‘over performer’, but during the transfer summer Steijn wasn’t happy with Mislintat’s targets to strengthen the squad.

Steijn was critical in several interviews and press conferences about Mislintat but also when speaking about his squad. After only a few matches, he started to throw his players under the bus. The players then simply stopped running for their manager.

Despite this and despite losing match after match, based on ridiculously bad game play, Steijn was still regarded positively by most media and pundits. It’s crazy really! Erik ten Hag received more criticism after reaching the semi final of the Champions League in comparison with Steijn. I can’t get my head around this.

I don’t know why, but leading newspapers were pointing to the bad squad and not Steijn. Every trainer should simply get more and better results out of this squad than Steijn.

It is time to regroup with a new manager, with a fresh outlook for the medium term and to get things under control again in Amsterdam. Who this new manager needs to be? There’s always a good candidate around at Ajax to take over immediately, but not this time. I really cannot say who is favourite to replace Steijn, I’m very curious who will be in charge after his departure!

Ajax will not be relegated. That’s simply impossible. I’m aware more clubs think so – or thought so. But in the Dutch league Ajax is too big and too good to be relegated. Maybe not so because of Ajax’s own qualities, but simply because of a lack of quality elsewhere for the clubs in danger of relegation. There’s a difference between bottom of the Eredivisie and bottom of the Premier League, for example.

It’s still really not unthinkable Ajax will still score some solid haul of points, end up in the top nine and qualify for the play-offs which provides a shot of European football at least.

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