Valentijn Driessen thinks that Erik ten Hag was thrown in front of the bus by the Ajax club management. The chief of football of The Telegraph says in the football podcast of the newspaper that in his eyes Edwin van der Sar should have responded openly to the fuss that arose after Ajax had four corona infected persons return from Portugal to the Netherlands against the rules with a private plane. Driessen had a heated discussion about this with Ten Hag after the game between FC Utrecht and Ajax (0-3).
“I really thought about Mike Verweij, he said that during one of the first times he came into the dressing room at Ajax, Ten Hag said: ‘If journalists say something is white, you have to say it is black. Because they always try to push you into a certain corner and judge you, you have to watch out for that.” Well, when I had that small discussion with Ten Hag, I had to think about that,” Driesen reflects Kick-Off, such as ‘s football podcast The Telegraph hot, back to the discussion with Ten Hag about the state of affairs surrounding Ajax’s aborted training camp in Portugal.
View the discussion between Valentijn Driessen and Erik ten Hag here.
“With a record in front of your head, insisting that you did well, while the whole of the Netherlands sees that you are trying to evade the rules. If you just do that, nothing will happen,” Driessen continues. “I don’t even want to tackle Erik ten Hag for this, but much more Edwin van der Sar. He is the director of that club and should have responded to this last week, when it came out that Ajax had used a separate plane to bring four corona infected persons to the Netherlands. Then you have to stand in front of the troops as director and you go through the dust. Or not, but then you say what was the thought behind it to have done this.”
“You leave it to the media and the people what they think. But in fact Ten Hag is thrown in front of the bus a bit, because Ajax did not want to say anything. This was the first moment that a person in charge of Ajax could be asked about this”, says Driessen. The Telegraph announced Monday morning that Ten Hag itself had to deal with a corona infection last week. Ajax confirmed that the trainer hadn’t been to the club for ‘a few days’, but did not comment on the reason.
“I was completely struck when Ten Hag talked about professional and careful handling, in the knowledge that he himself had to deal with corona. He had missed most of the training sessions towards FC Utrecht, he was only back on the training field on Saturday,” says Driessen. According to him, Ten Hag was not on the private plane that returned from Portugal with four infected persons. “When you take those words in your mouth so often, I think: come on. No one in that room knew that he had had a corona infection, but he is blowing so high from the tower. That’s going to rub. I didn’t want to throw it at him there.”