Kenneth Perez finds it incomprehensible that Ajax has not yet sold Edson Álvarez. The team from Amsterdam received an offer of twenty million euros from Stade Rennes for the Mexican midfielder, but trainer Erik ten Hag does not want to lose Álvarez and Marc Overmars did not agree with the transfer fee. During the program football talk on ESPN the analyst is critical of ‘disturbing factor’ Álvarez.
“Whether Ajax should have accepted the offer from France for Álvarez? Well, as far as I’m concerned, one hundred percent sure,” Perez said on Monday evening. “I find him at the ball a disturbing factor in Ajax’s game. I understand that you need someone ‘who can conquer the ball’, the excuse that is also used for Ibrahim Sangaré at PSV. But if you don’t hand in the ball that often, then you don’t have to recapture the ball so often.”
Sjoerd Mossou, also a guest in the program, believes that Álvarez ‘did his part’ in the past Champions League season, but Perez does not agree. “I also thought that he walked everywhere and nowhere too often. It just takes too long in my opinion. And then you run into problems, especially if you play for a team that is always in possession of the ball,” said Perez, who finds it striking that Overmars, despite his ‘sale need’, did not accept an offer from France.
“If you have to sell, as Overmars himself said four or five times, he is a player who can sell you. You have already received an offer on him, so it is very likely that you will accept it? Isn’t he an indispensable player, I think?” concludes Perez, whose statements are nuanced by Mossou. “The ‘have to sell’ of Ajax is of course relative. If it takes six months or a year longer… Ajax’s ‘have to sell’ is a completely different kind of Feyenoord’s ‘have to sell’”, concludes the journalist.