Erik ten Hag is working on his last season as Ajax coach, Valentijn Driessen suspects. Although Ten Hag’s contract will continue until mid-2023, according to Driessen, he is approaching the sporty ceiling in Amsterdam. If Ajax reaches far this season in the Champions League, in the eyes of the football chief of The Telegraph little that Ten Hag could achieve.
Ten Hag has been working at Ajax since December 2017 and has since become champion of the Netherlands twice. He also won the KNVB Cup twice, once the Johan Cruijff Scale, he reached the semi-finals of the Champions League with Ajax and the team was at the top of the prematurely ended 2019/20 season. “I think he will leave Ajax after this year. If they perform well in the Champions League this year, there is not much else to get out of it,” Driessen says in the podcast Kick-Off.
After four rounds in the Champions League, Ajax is already certain of a place in the eighth final. Ten Hag’s team can hardly miss the group win. “If you reach the semi-finals again, or even more, then you have done really great. But what is the future of Ajax? You will never structurally play in the last four or last eight, because you are simply not financially strong enough for that. Whether it’s Manchester United or any other club, I think he’s in his final year.”
The name of Manchester United is mentioned because Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is in the kicker seat. According to the newspaper Manchester Evening News trainer Brendan Rodgers of Leicester City is the favorite to possibly succeed Solskjaer, but trainers such as Ten Hag and Luis Enrique are also good on it. “Wouldn’t he rather go to the Bundesliga? He gave his heart to that?” wonders the present journalist Jeroen Kapteijns. Earlier this month, Ten Hag called the Bundesliga a ‘fantastic competition’.
“There must be room at those clubs,” Driessen emphasizes, however. “Borussia Dortmund is of the level of Ajax. The only one that stands out is Bayern Munich, but that club is not going to put Julian Nagelsmann aside. I don’t believe that. Manchester United would of course be great. You usually get the time there. to put something down.” Following the departure of Sir Alex Ferguson in 2013, David Moyes, Louis van Gaal, Jose Mourinho and Solskjaer took the helm at Old Trafford.