Ajax strategy analysis Het Parool Jordi Cruijff PSV, Digi Mart USA News: The current direction of Ajax under Jordi Cruijff is bad for the Amsterdam club’s business model, according to an analysis published Saturday by Het Parool ahead of Ajax’s annual shareholders meeting next Tuesday.
The newspaper says Ajax hopes to break the sporting dominance of PSV under Cruijff’s leadership, but that PSV is also tightening its financial position. It describes the Amsterdam strategy to catch up with the club from Eindhoven as fragile, pointing above all to a lack of stability at Ajax.
According to the analysis, no other Eredivisie club has gone through as many technical directors and coaches as Ajax in the past four and a half years. In the same period, about twenty supervisory board members came and went, a pattern the paper contrasts with the club’s zero league titles over that span.
The atmosphere around the club is currently better, and Ajax sits second in the Eredivisie. Thanks to Cruijff, the club also retained high-profile names such as Marc ter Stegen and Julian Brandt.
Still, the paper notes that the change of course under Cruijff carries risks.
The average age of the first-team squad, 26.4 years, is the oldest of any Eredivisie club. The paper argues this is a weakness for a model based on developing youth players and selling them to foreign clubs for substantial fees, pointing to the transfers of former youth players Jorrel Hato, Brian Brobbey and Kenneth Taylor, which it says helped avoid red figures in recent years.
Cruijff has also brought in several players for Jong Ajax this summer, another departure from previous practice. The Vereniging van Effectenbezitters (VEB), which represents private shareholders, said the technical staff, the Jong Ajax setup and scouting are now tightly aligned with the technical director’s preferences, and that continuity could be at risk if Cruijff, whose contract runs until 2028, leaves early.
The expected departure of managing director Menno Geelen and the end of main sponsor Ziggo, which had been the club’s main sponsor at 12.5, add further difficulties that could be significant for the club’s future.
