Marco van Basten watched an interview by Ryan Gravenberch this week in amazement. After the 0-5 victory over Fortuna Sittard, the nineteen-year-old midfielder of Ajax acknowledged that he sometimes has a concentration problem: if his team takes the lead early, he sometimes has trouble ‘continuously keeping the focus’. Gravenberch acknowledged that he is going to play ‘a bit too easy’ and that he was made aware of this by trainer Erik ten Hag. In talk show Rondo Van Basten calls the youngster’s statements ‘really inappropriate’.
Jan van Halst thinks it is ‘nice that he is so open’, but Van Basten sees the situation differently. “So I think this is really strange. This boy is just coming to watch. Then you can’t say that you have to concentrate?”, asks San Marco wonder. “He is eighteen, by the way. When you are eighteen, you cannot say this. If you are not motivated by then, you will be 22 later, what are you going to do? I think it is really inappropriate, really inappropriate, if you are eighteen , are nineteen or twenty years old. If you excel every week in the Dutch league, okay. But this one is really just coming up. How many good matches has he played? A few, and then you are already fed up?”
?? Ajax player Ryan Gravenberch has trouble with his focus when Ajax is far ahead: @MarcovanBasten gets excited. ‘If you excel every week… But how many good matches has he played?’#RONDO #ZiggoSport pic.twitter.com/1lYUYQIM5w
— Ziggo Sport Football (@ZS_Voetbal) September 26, 2021
“I think he is talking a bit with the journalist, but I really don’t think it’s a text for a young boy,” concludes Van Basten. Van Halst also finds the concentration problem remarkable. “I’m curious how it will go if he ends up in a major European competition. Then you don’t have time to sleep.” Ten Hag is trying to help his pupil, the trainer told ESPN. “He has to watch out for that. He has a lot of talent and has gone through an enormous development. But if he wants to continue, he must keep raising the bar.”
Ten Hag was asked on Friday at the weekly press conference whether his group of players tends to lose sharpness. “It is in the DNA of Ajax to be easy going”, he said remarkably enough. “We have to ban that in the training, but we also have to watch out for it and not allow it in our team. Fortunately, I have a number of routines who feel it perfectly, who are working on it, include the young people in it, coach and are demanding.”