Sjoerd Mossou watched Maurice Steijn's interview with amazement The Telegraph. The dismissed Ajax coach threw mud at former director of football affairs Sven Mislintat in the newspaper and seemed to be cleaning up his own alley. “At the bottom line, he remains the trainer who was at the bottom with Ajax,” said Mossou. Football zone spoke extensively with the journalist Algemeen Dagblad.

For Ajax, the year 2024 cannot be much worse than 2023. The team from Amsterdam wore out five trainers, were at the bottom of the Eredivisie for some time and were eliminated in the cup by the amateurs of Hercules. For Mossou there is no doubt which club will disappoint the most in the first half of the season.

“Well, where do you start? It has been a kind of clusterfuck at Ajax. An accumulation of wrong decisions, from the moment Marc Overmars was fired because of his dick pics. What followed was a domino effect, panic football. Ajax certainly has the most disappointed of all clubs, that seems logical to me.”

Around the Johan Cruijff ArenA, the accusing finger is pointed at the people responsible for the current malaise. Maurits Hendriks, Edwin van der Sar, Sven Mislintat and Maurice Steijn, for example. The latter gave an interview at the end of last week The Telegraph.

“I read the piece with surprise on the one hand, because he remains the trainer who was at the bottom of the Eredivisie with Ajax,” said Mossou. “You would expect him to look in the mirror a bit, but that wasn't really the case. He named a whole host of players he wanted. Some names were logical, others completely unattainable.”

Due to missing out on Champions League football, Ajax had to cut its salary budget significantly, making names like Hakim Ziyech, Stefan de Vrij and Isco unattainable. “You can blame Mislintat for a lot, but that assignment was a fait accompli,” Mossou continues. “Then you can name ten nice players, but that is not very realistic in the situation Ajax was in.”

Gambled and lost
Yet, according to Mossou, the German can also be blamed for a lot. “Very strange decisions, he has taken big risks with players. Mislintat did not start from a base, a kind of axis of recognizable players who know the Eredivisie. Also players with whom you do not run a very big risk. Out of ten purchases was eight guesses. That was way too many.”

Mossou concludes that Steijn is not a trainer for the top. “There are different qualities required of a coach. You have to be unflappable and stoic. That is a very important quality if you want to work at the top. Steijn is not that, never has been. That does not immediately make him a bad coach , but a bad trainer for Ajax.”

“It's almost unbelievable if you end up at the bottom with the selection he had. Then you do something terribly wrong. I understood that he decided to go to Ajax. You get that chance once in your life if you are Maurice Steijn. Perhaps he should have made more demands in the first place, but bottom line he does not have the level to coach Ajax. This has been shown on all fronts.”

Van Der Sar
Someone else who has succumbed to the pressure is Van der Sar. “I think he realizes that his last year and a half have been very bad,” says Mossou. “It was remarkable that after the departure of Overmars he took over the technical matters himself with Hamstra and Huntelaar. The choice for Alfred Schreuder was also his choice.”

“Van der Sar has in any case not proven that he is a strong, stable general manager under difficult circumstances. When things became more difficult at Ajax, he made too many wrong decisions. There is no guarantee that he is an ideal football director under all circumstances. at Van der Sar.”

Mossou does not dare to say who the new trainer will be. He does drop the name of Miguel à ngel Sánchez Muñoz (Girona). “You have to think about that type of trainer. Knutsen (trainer of Bodø/Glimt, ed.) will not be in the picture any time soon, I expect. That was really Mislintat's choice and was at the top of his list.”

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