Mohamed Daramy scored twice in the TOTO KNVB Cup match against Excelsior Maassluis (9-0) on Thursday, but the twenty-year-old left winger of Ajax has not convinced Marciano Vink and Arnold Bruggink at all. The analysts of ESPN make a cautious assessment after the first half of Daramy in Amsterdam. “Too many carelessness”, concludes Vink, among other things.
Erik ten Hag put up an almost complete B-team against the amateur team. Extra painful for Daramy was that he started on the bench and was overtaken by Amourricho van Axel Dongen, who made his basic debut. “Of course that says a lot,” says Vink. “Of course he is a very young player, who really has yet to find his way at Ajax. There are moments when you can see that he has something to offer. He has speed, he has a reasonably good dribble, but there are still some quite a lot of sloppiness in him. in his dribble, in his passing, in his finishing: too many sloppiness to be able to say: ‘You are really knocking on the door at Ajax.'”
Bruggink is not enthusiastic about Daramy either. “How much was paid for that!?” asks the former attacker, who does not receive an answer in the studio. Ajax communicated on August 22 that Daramy cost no less than twelve million euros, excluding one million euros in any bonuses. “The point is actually: then you have to be so much better than your own youth, that’s what Ajax is always concerned with,” said Bruggink. “I don’t think the other boys are very shocked when they see this boy play.” Daramy seems to have surpassed Van Axel Dongen in the pecking order from childhood.
Daramy was Ajax’s second choice last summer, as Vink also points out. The team from Amsterdam wanted to get Kamaldeen Sulemana, but the wing striker chose Stade Rennes after a long transfer soap. “Sulemana of course did not go through, and they had their sights set on that,” Vink knows. “I think Daramy was second or third on such a list, and then they just pushed through and settled for slightly less talent.”