Edwin van der Sar gave the green light at the last minute for the arrival of Peter Bosz at Ajax in the spring, Valentijn Driessen reports based on sources in the Johan Cruijff ArenA. Van der Sar, who resigned as general manager on May 30, initially blocked the arrival of Bosz as Ajax’s new coach due to a past conflict. “Van der Sar wanted to step over his shadow, but Sven Mislintat wanted Maurice Stejin,” Driessen said in the podcast Kickoff by The Telegraph.
Ajax took a long time to appoint a new coach and left interim coach John Heitinga floundering. Bosz openly stated that he would love to work for Ajax, but the Amsterdam team ignored the coach. “I have always said: Edwin van der Sar fell for Peter Bosz,” says Driessen. “But just before he left in Amsterdam, he said that he would still agree with Peter Bosz. Only Mislintat was already working with Maurice Steijn and he refused to break it off. He did not want to do business with Bosz.”
“Van der Sar has always found it incomprehensible that Bosz let the club down.” In the summer of 2017, after Bosz’s first year at Ajax, the coach indicated internally that the collaboration with some staff members, including Dennis Bergkamp, had become untenable. Bosz did not feel supported by Van der Sar, who did not want to choose a side, and left for Borussia Dortmund when the opportunity presented itself. “In the end, Van der Sar wanted to step over his shadow this year and he said: ‘We are going for Peter Bosz.'”
Mislintat didn’t like that and signed Steijn. “The crazy thing is that John Heitinga was still employed by Ajax at the time,” adds Mike Verweij. “Heitinga has asked Mislintat several times: ‘Are you already involved with someone else?’ That was absolutely out of the question. He could have very easily switched to Peter Bosz, if that had been the truth at that moment. Heitinga would also have loved to become an assistant under Bosz.” Heitinga now works as assistant coach to David Moyes at West Ham United.