As Ajax coach, Frank de Boer had a very difficult relationship with Mounir El Hamdaoui. The former coach of the Amsterdam team, who won four titles with the club, even temporarily removed the attacker from the selection. Years later, De Boer looks back on the difficult collaboration with El Hamdaoui and brings up a remarkable incident.

“Like in the beginning, with El Hamdaoui, that was crucial for me. I think,” said De Boer in the podcast Football is Life. “To tackle him in front of the group. And with that you actually win the group a bit. At that moment they look like: what is the trainer going to do?”

“He challenges you and will test you, being a young coach,” said the currently clubless De Boer, who brought up a curious event during the conversation. “He sat in the toilet for ten minutes during halftime. Then I threw him out. That was really such a testing moment.”

“You can let people walk all over you, or you can take this action,” De Boer explains why he imposed a penalty on El Hamdaoui. “Then you know that you may fail at El Hamdaoui, but you have won over 99 percent of the other players, or 90 percent.”

De Boer emphasizes that he has always thought El Hamdaoui was a good player. “But at that moment you have to make a choice. Sometimes it's right, and other times it's wrong. And at that moment I felt I did it right.”

Luis Suarez

Another attacker, Luis Suárez, decided to exchange Ajax for Liverpool during the winter break of the 2010/11 season. De Boer had seen his departure coming for some time and turned necessity into a virtue. “If someone gets injured or leaves, I see it as a new challenge. How are we going to solve that?”

“They are no longer there. So you can worry about it, but that is of no use to you. It is better to put your energy into the boys who will do it for you,” concludes De Boer, who eventually brought Ajax into Left as trainer in 2016.

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