It would stop Marc Overmars if a German club approaches him and he has to take a seat on the bench. The director of football affairs of Ajax simultaneously proposes in a double interview with Erik ten Hag The Telegraph that he is ‘close to the group’. For example, he joins Ten Hag and the selection for lunch every day, to see if there is anything.
Ten Hag says he will allow Overmars completely and would not mind if he sat next to him on the couch, as also happens in Germany. “I don’t have to think about that. Then I stop. It would even stop me if a German club approaches me and demands that I sit next to the coach,” Overmars said. At the same time, the technical person with final responsibility says that he is close to the group at Ajax.
“Before Dortmund home I wanted to see Antony and tell him to go deep without the ball. Then Antony nods like this: it will be fine. That’s important for the team. And the tension that I experience myself slides off me,” says Overmars. He has lunch daily with Ten Hag and the selection and in the words of the coach ‘speaks, stimulates, motivates and corrects’ Overmars players to ‘monitor the process at Ajax and steer it in the right direction’.
“We see each other every day and we also have daily contact by phone or on the app. Even during holidays, because there is always a theme. You never leave me alone, do you? haha. I come home after the Champions League and he sends a photo that he is watching the match,” says Ten Hag. Overmars – who, in his own words, looks back at every match completely – bombards him with questions. “Why did you do this, why that? Or why not do this or that? Sometimes I don’t answer straight away, but such nights I am awake for quite a long time.”