Nathan Sprey Updated: Sep 21 2023 19:07 CEST 3 min reading time © ProShots
Louis van Gaal is willing to join Ajax, reports Valentijn Driessen. If the former coach of Ajax and the Dutch national team, among others, can gather the right people around him in the Johan Cruijff ArenA and his health allows it, then he is willing to join, according to De Telegraaf’s football chief. He can help create order in the chaos that has currently arisen around director of football affairs Sven Mislintat. Danny Blind (sporting) and Michael Kinsbergen (organizational) can be at his side.
“Of the living Ajax icons, Van Gaal is number one to tackle the current chaos at Ajax,” Driessen writes in his column. According to Driessen, the man who previously had great success as head coach at Ajax is willing to join, under the above conditions. Although the journalist had a love-hate relationship with the coach during Van Gaal’s final period, Driessen would immediately take action if he were Ajax.
“The supervisory board, led by the failing chairman Pier Eringa, has no choice but to kneel down in the Algarve or Noordwijk and hand Ajax icon Van Gaal the keys to the record national champion. If, as a supervisory board, you have already handed over your club to someone, it would be a hundred times better to hand it over to the proven technical professional and Ajax player Van Gaal than to a German charlatan named Sven Mislintat,” Driessen writes.
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“Other club icons have less chance of success if they are called upon. Frank Rijkaard has been approached before, but does not want to come out of football retirement. Marco van Basten was also previously approached about a return to Amsterdam. “But if it When it comes to taking responsibility, he never gives up,” says Driessen.
“Van Gaal is cut from a different cloth. Although he went way too far in November 2011 when he planted a stab in the back of the eternal number 14 during Johan Cruijff’s velvet revolution. Everything to realize his unbridled ambition to become chairman of the board at Ajax,” says Driessen, who compares the current situation with that in 2010.
“Although Ajax is now in much worse shape sportingly than it was at the time with Martin Jol as head coach. The lack of Ajax blood and Ajax players in the club management was a reason for Cruijff to take to the barricades,” says the journalist. “Just like in 2010: Ajax is no longer Ajax. Louis van Gaal, with his Ajax DNA – together with the new board – is the ideal person to let Ajax become Ajax again.”
