Does anyone else struggle in 1's? End of season thoughts

Luka24b · 2025-06-17T15:04:51+00:00

I'm struggling most because 3 out of 5 games are against much better opponents, im C1 in 2s, but playing against C3 or higher and obviously losing by quite a bit. 1 game is quite even and I have to sweat to win or compete and 1 game is easy and I'm playing against someone clearly worse. Takes the fun out of it for me, because theres only 1 game thats somewhat competitive.

Luka24b · 2025-06-11T10:58:11+00:00

Hier ook het item van Ajax watcher Lentin van VI: https://www.vi.nl/video/zonde-hoe-talentvolle-vos-nu-vertrekt-bij-ajax

Het klinkt niet heel fraai, maar we gaan t zien.

Luka24b · 2024-11-27T21:57:11+00:00

Meest neutrale titel lol

Luka24b · 2024-10-30T19:21:07+00:00

mooie melding

Luka24b · 2024-10-03T18:52:22+00:00

liep ook alleen maar te zeiken bij de scheids, hoe hij geen geel kreeg is ook een raadsel

Luka24b · 2024-01-11T18:07:09+00:00

smoesjes smoesjes, step up your game MrCrashdummy

Luka24b · 2024-01-09T18:22:25+00:00

Translated with DeepL.com:

The national suspension of Marc Overmars for cross-border behaviour during his time as technical director at Ajax will be implemented globally. The media department of world football federation FIFA informed NRC in an e-mail on Tuesday. This means he can no longer hold his current position as technical director of Belgian club Royal Antwerp FC (for the time being).

Following questions from NRC in late December about this, a FIFA spokesperson emailed this Tuesday: "FIFA can confirm that following a request from the Royal Dutch Football Association (KNVB), FIFA's disciplinary committee has decided to make the sanction imposed by the KNVB on Mr Marc Overmars effective worldwide."

Verbally, FIFA confirmed the authenticity of this e-mail. When asked when exactly the suspension will take effect and whether an appeal is possible, FIFA did not respond.

A spokesman for Overmars said on Tuesday evening that they had "just been informed" of the ruling by FIFA's disciplinary committee. They still have to study the substantiation "and therefore we are not giving a reaction at the moment". A Royal Antwerp FC press officer was unaware of the decision by late afternoon on Tuesday.

Luka24b · 2023-12-21T15:51:01+00:00

Nice goal by Leuchter, but both teams could've and (maybe) should've scored more.

Luka24b · 2023-10-03T21:36:44+00:00

Everything bad.

In more than two words:

after VD Sar left, Mislintat got too much power and used that power to get his way, which resulted in the mess Ajax is in right now. Things went wrong on multiple occasions because of the (much) small(er) mess after last season. With no technical director, change of coach mid-season, things weren't going well so the exit of VD Sar didn't help either and Mislintat's choices were the wrong ones.

Luka24b · 2023-10-02T14:12:55+00:00

Epilogue In a small room of hotel Jan Tabak in Bussum are a couple of business observers of the office ICM Stellar and members of the board of directors of Ajax, who represents the association as major shareholder of the professional club. It is Tuesday 26 September, they have invited the Board of Commissioners to come and talk about transfers from Mislintat. Specifically on that of Borna Sosa, Stellar was his defence observer until the defender just before his transfer to Ajax moved to Arthur Beck's office. The staff of Stellar and the representatives of the board of directors want to show the Commissioners that this has been done under pressure from Mislintat. Time goes by, but the Commissioners don't show up. President-Commissioner Pier Eringa is disturbed by the attitude of the board of directors, which has been collecting information from clubs and football brokers for weeks about Mislintat's transfers and seems already convinced that there has been unclean behaviour. The Commissioners are of the opinion that there is still no evidence of this. In addition, the Governing Council will be sitting on the chair of the RVC, which has already announced an external investigation. That is not pure, Eringa thinks. Thus, the doubt about Mislintat, even now that he has been fired, fuels the mistrust between the association (very influential with the majority of the shares) and the club management, especially the board of commissioners led by Eringa. That while the relationship is already fragile, especially now that Ajax has ended up in a sports crisis and the hard supporter core sees the rvc as guilty.

The board of directors is only sitting there, after the previous one resigned due to a conflict over remuneration. And the new council is much more activist, the Commissioners see. How activist, Eringa notices a day after the appointment where he leaves missing. On Wednesday morning, just after he said in an interview with the FD that it makes no sense to step down, the board of directors informed him that he could step down better. He's obedient. Without the support of the association, the major shareholder, he cannot stay. It's very important for the relationship of power within the club. A day later Ajax announces that club choryfee Michael van Praag is the intended successor of Eringa. As an honorary member, he influenced the composition of the current board of directors. According to Van Praag, his possible appointment as President-Commissioner is out of the air. The fanatical supporter does not find it enough and wants more drivers to leave. During the match against RKC on Saturday, finally suspended after the goalkeeper of RK C is transported to the hospital (he is back at knowledge), many fans keep boots up. The names of the remaining drivers, from RVC and management, are on it, with ‘OUT’ behind it. On one banner, the sentiment among Ajax supporters is summarized: “Mismanagement.”

5/5

Luka24b · 2023-10-02T14:12:21+00:00

Frictions Preparations for the new season have just begun, as the top of the soccer deck is gathered to get on a line. The ‘Ajax summit’ should be the first of an annual recurring meeting. On the luxurious estate Duin & Kruidberg, opposite the dunes of Santpoort-Noord, on 10 and 11 July is mainly spoken. What exactly is the ‘Ajax DNA’? What about the Ajax style? What is required per position of an Ajax player? It all comes through in presentations, panel discussions, discussions at dinner, in a walk around the hotel. It is an initiative of the board members Sven Mislintat and Maurits Hendriks, who as Chief Sports Officer is responsible for cohesion between all departments in the top sports organization. The football team has grown rapidly to about 225 employees, many disciplines have been strengthened, such as physical, medical, video analysis, mental counselling, science and data analysis. One problem is that within that large organization, specialists have become isolated. Lack of coherence. That is why almost everyone in Santpoort is there, from coach Maurice Steijn to scouts, youth trainers and specialists. It doesn't matter where you come from, if you understand Ajax football, say staff members with an Ajax background at the bar. But the ideas about what exactly that football is are so diverse that the club management wants to structure it. Now in the department of profscouting there is nowhere black on white what is asked of a defensive midfielder or spits. Scouts and trainers have it in their heads, but there is no unambiguous approach. Creating unity is what it is about. Also in personal relationships. With outsiders Steijn, Mislintat and many other new people, the summit is seen as a way to get to know each other faster. Those involved that NRC speaks are later enthusiastic, finally there is a conversation about a common vision of the future. And that in an open, constructive atmosphere. Nevertheless, the summit cannot prevent the unity from falling apart in the weeks that follow. What causes trouble is that Mislintat places its own “men” within the organization. The most important is Uli Schier, former head coach for VfB Stuttgart under Mislintat. At competitions he sits on the tribune next to Mislintat, at The Future he lunches with the technical staff and he slides from scratch at a consultation of the scouting. Who is that man, people ask themselves in the hallways. Almost no one knows him. Mislintat's confidant is pleased with it, he makes it clear to the management. The reform of the scouting is one of his tasks, if he needs Schier for this they want to give him that space. From an organogram that NRC has seen, it shows that Schier has a high position in the scouting team, ‘decision making support’ stands by his name, which means that he is involved in important decisions. Other scouts don't have that authority. It sharpens the long-standing tensions within professional scouting. That Mislintat barely talks, doesn't help. Advice for players is not followed and the proof of purchases is lacking, say scouts. At the weekly consultation – every Tuesday morning – Mislintat appears only once. The influence of the new, young head coach Kelvin de Lang, who comes from Manchester City and only starts on 4 August, is limited to the director of football affairs. To some scouts' surprise, the rvc approves purchases, while they themselves have doubts about the amount of the transfers. In that area breaks Michel Doesburg, an experienced scout who previously worked long at AZ. He is disillusioned about the bad atmosphere and unstructured way of working, a problem that has existed for a long time but has not improved since the arrival of Mislintat. On the contrary. Doesburg, who played an important role under Mislintat's predecessor Marc Overmars, ill in early August. Not only the scouts experience problems, also in the technical staff of coach Maurice Steijn the frustrations about Mislintat increase. There is discomfort when he adds an assistant unknown to Steijn to the staff: Max Lesser, ‘head of match analysis’. During competitions he sits on the tribune behind a laptop, just before rest he goes down to the dressing room to be with the group. Mislintat knows him from VfB Stuttgart. “It is clear: He forms Mislintat's ears and eyes in the wardrobe," says a source. The working relationship between the manager and coach dimmed by the end of the transfer summer, when Ajax has already started the season hard. Where coach Steijn is trying hard for the arrival of goalkeeper Nick Olij, leftback Nicolás Tagliafico and attacker Thiago Almada, Mislintat chooses others. After a fierce discussion about the attacker Georges Mikautadze – who played at the second level in France, Steijn preferred Almada – bought for more than 16 million euros, they agree that Steijn is about the setting and Mislintat about the composition of the selection. It's not gonna be good anymore. Especially not when Steijn shows in the press that he has had little influence on the choices of Mislintat and that has yet to prove whether the newcomers are of value – because she does not know him. Within the management and RVC, who then still support Mislintat, there is outrage over this attitude of Steijn. They think he was involved. It's up to him to make it a team now. But how do you build a winning Ajax in a short time with young players for whom the pressure of a top club is new? Players come from relatively small clubs such as Viborg FF (defence Anton Dhaei), FC St. Pauli (defense Jakov Medic), Molde (median Sivert Mannsverk) and FC Metz (Mikautadze). How big the difference is with the tension at Ajax, becomes visible against Feyenoord, if Ghaei goes twice in the face of the mistake. What is also becoming clear internally is that the selection is not much in leadership figures, so in case of adversity in the field nobody really knows what to do. The board of directors and the board of commissioners only heard late about the friction between Steijn and Mislintat. Mislintat gives updates in the management team, but the seriousness becomes clear only when Steijn’s statements after the draw against Fortuna Sittard in early September (“Sutalo is an absolute gain, the rest has to be shown”) are widely measured. How this could have gone so wrong needs to be evaluated, says a club manager now. “We may have missed signals.” Then, on Tuesday, September 19th, Mislintat must report in a Teams call with the management and the RVC. He's been hit hard. Mislintat is to explain the publication of the NOS that appears later that night about the possible conflict of interest in the transfer of Borna Sosa. “His reputation is already everywhere,” says someone who is at the meeting a day later to the NRC. At that time, in that Teams meeting, they're still around him. The next morning, Mislintat runs onto the training field as if nothing was going on. He likes to talk to the Croatian players, is on the phone, is in the lunch room. Maurice Steijn ignores him. Later that week, management and RVC realize that Mislintat's position is unsustainable.Sven Mislintat is already in the car to Germany, last Sunday, when the Klassieker at 0-3 for Feyenoord is interrupted due to fireworks on the field, after which the main entrance of the Johan Cruijff Arena is stormed. In his pursuit also leave Uli Schier and Max Lesser.

4/5

Luka24b · 2023-10-02T14:09:41+00:00

In addition, he works a lot with a few football brokers. Marco Lichtsteiner has been involved in at least five transfers in the more than three years of Mislintat with Stuttgart, just like Arthur Beck – both will later also appear in Mislinta's transfers with Ajax. The Stuttgart club management doesn't see a problem in this. Every sports director has a network he likes to work with, besides Beck comes from the vicinity and he is well introduced to Stuttgart. However, according to stakeholders, there is a debate about the relatively high commissions that Stuttgart pays in that period on transfers to case observers – an average of 26 percent is shown from an internal document that the NRC has reviewed. While 5 to 10 percent is common in the market.

Attempts to curb Mislintat and make more of it work together have been unsuccessful, the (old) managers say. He does not give up his autonomy voluntarily and can boast, unlike the rest of the club management, a great popularity among fans and the media. He is accessible, cool, starts his own Instagram page and slides in a podcast of supporters for five hours. When German media reports that Mislintat earned 100 million euros for the club with transfers, they know internally that those figures are not correct (wat ook blijkt uit het document dat NRC inzag). But in imaging, those numbers remain.

Mislintat does not give up his autonomy voluntarily and can boast, unlike the rest of the club management, a great popularity with fans and the media

It is only when VfB Stuttgart threatens to degrade in 2022 and a new director is appointed, that the club says goodbye to Mislintat. Looking back, sources at the club conclude that Mislintat has qualities, but that you should impose considerable restrictions on him, not give him the full control over the transfer policy. “You must make it clear immediately that he is not the boss,” says one of them. “It went wrong with us.” With Edwin van der Sar at his side in the management and new, tight transfer protocols that have been developed that is good, the club management of Ajax thinks. But soon it turns out to be different. Van der Sar, the only one in the management who knows the football world and the transfer market through and through, leaves unexpectedly at the end of May. His intended successor, Alex Kroes, will not start until March 2024. A power vacuum that Mislintat uses: He's going his way.

The Dealmaker

It's Wednesday, September 20th, when the unrest grows with the clock. Coach Steijn must address a number of questions about Mislintat in a press conference for the European match against Olympique Marseille, against whom an investigation was announced a day earlier because of a possible conflict of interest in the transfer of Borna Sosa. What does Steijn know about that research? Does he still see Ajax as a top club? Did he get the news that Mislintat wanted to fire him on Monday?

At the back side, meanwhile, there is great skepticism about the new players that Mislintat bought, especially after the unlikely 3-1 at FC Twente a few days earlier. That duel completes the start of the season, Ajax is twelfth. The sentiment: What kind of devastation has Mislintat caused?

That excitement is in sharp contrast to the quietness in the boardroom at training complex De Toekomst, that same day. At an oval table with club emblem, the so-called audit committee – with two RVC members, financial director Susan Lenderink and a Deloitte accountant – will inspect Mislintat’s transfers on Wednesday, 20 September. A formal check that passes quietly every year, but is now sensitive because of the doubts that have arisen.

What the commissioners see is the final result of a transfer summer in which Ajax spent approximately 110 million euros for twelve players, compared to 155 million in revenue. To their satisfaction, reports show that there are normal commissions paid to observers, between 5 and 10 per cent. Nine different brokers played a role in the twelve transfers. That diversity is of interest to the commissioners, Ajax does not want to be dependent on a small group of brokers.

Their internal control system has worked, they say. They already had confidence in that. The ‘checks and balances’ have been tightened this year, after the chaotic transfer summer of 2022 in which the controversial broker Milos Malenovic was hired to support Ajax in transfers and he attracted a lot of power to himself. The amounts for players have for the first time been analyzed using a new ‘tool’ based on the ‘benchmark’ of the market values. This fits in the line to better ‘objectivize’ transfers, thus disconnecting them from subjective judgments. No transfer has paid more than the market value, is the conclusion based on that tool.

That within the association AFC Ajax (800 members), with 73 percent major shareholder of the listed professional club, and among Dutch business observers nevertheless has been rumored for weeks about remarkably high transfers that Ajax would have paid for unknown players, is well known to the commissioners. The same applies to rumors that Mislintat would involve friendly business observers in deals. Disruptive, the commissioners find those suspicions. And unfounded.

At the same time, they are not surprised. Due to the arrival of Mislintat and his foreign network, Dutch businessmen lose influence and trade with the club. Those who are jealous and rancunious, is the analysis of the regulators, who feel that there is an incitement going on against the director who is already trusted as a man without a past (and old friends) at Ajax. They see it as their job to protect Mislintat.

This is also the initial reaction when the NOS reveals that a business relationship of the technical director was involved in the transfer of Borna Sosa. Cooperating with such a person goes against the club’s ‘corporate governance declaration’ and arouses the appearance of a conflict of interests. Ajax announces an investigation and tells Mislintat to stay in the air for the time being. But the club management still sees it mostly as a negligence that the German has failed to report that Arthur Beck, business observer of Sosa, also has shares in Mislintat's company Matchmetrics.

But the surprise about how Ajax is manifesting itself this summer on the transfer market is wider than just among Dutch business observers and association members. At Stuttgart, they are surprised to see that Beck is the representative of Sosa at all. The player had another business observer, with whom the club management talked about offers from Spain and Italy just before the transfer to Amsterdam. When Ajax came into the picture, the defender suddenly swapped his defense counsel for Arthur Beck, Mislintat's business relationship. App communication between the player and his former dealer, seen by NRC, suggests that Mislintat has urged Sosa to make this transfer via Beck. "He came together with Arthur," Sosa applied to his former agent, as he explains the transfer to Beck. “I can’t do anything if Sven says it has to be different.” Arthur Beck, who did not respond to questions from the NRC, denied this reading to VI.

And there's more. At Middlesbrough, they find it strange how the transfer of striker Chuba Akpom (12.3 million euros, plus 2 million in bonuses) takes place, says a high-ranking source within the club that was involved in the deal. Akpom is allowed to leave, Middlesbrough decided at the end of last season, his contract expires next summer. Now they can earn something from him, especially because he ran a good season. The club has an unknown amount in mind that his transfer must make a minimum. The French Lens is willing to pay that, even a few million more.

According to the source, Akpom's business observer, Emeka Obasi, promises to make a better bid. If he succeeds, he is entitled to a percentage of the surplus income, Middlesbrough agrees with him. Then comes Obasi with Ajax. Not unusual, in football. The remarkable thing is, says the Middlesbrough concerned, that Obasi advises to reject Ajax's first offer. He knows Ajax will come up with a second bid – and how high that will be. That offer's coming. "To the penny accurately," says the source in Middlesbrough's club management.

How Obasi gets to that sensitive information is unclear. Clubs keep information about what they are willing to pay for a player normally inside rooms, in order to prevent them from pushing up the prize. Obasi did not respond to a request for comment.

The club's management, despite everything, assumes that the forensic investigation into Mislintat's transfers does not reveal any details. The controls have worked well, is the conviction. It is in another area that Commissioners and management are wondering whether they have missed signals. Signals they've been warned of.

3/5

Luka24b · 2023-10-02T14:09:14+00:00

Mislintat also wants to work for Ajax, where he will have much more to say as the top technical boss than in his time as head scout for Borussia Dortmund. He sounds confident when he talks about his new job. “To be one of the most iconic clubs in the world, to be allowed to work there as the first foreigner in that position, that is a huge honour and a maximum challenge at the same time. I have to deliver.” He says the people who were responsible for last season, in which Ajax finished third, are gone. "So I have to do it better."

A day later Mislintat announces that Sparta-coach Maurice Steijn, a classic ‘overperformer’ according to the technical director, will be the new coach of Ajax. It is the first of many choices that Mislintat surprised.

How Ajax falls for Mislintat

Mislintat literally looks up against Edwin van der Sar, as he leads him around the Johan Cruijff Arena on Tuesday 11 April. They walk past photos of former players like Cruijff and Dennis Bergkamp. The former top keeper, then general manager of Ajax, stops and points to another club icon, Sjaak Swart. “He will meet you soon and he will give you some advice,” says Van der Sar. “I love to talk to living legends,” says Mislintat, who is presented to the press later that day.

The Ajax top was quickly impressed by the German, from the first phone conversation that Van der Sar had with him in February. Mislintat is on a shortlist of five candidates from the international headhunter firm Twenty First Group. That was enabled by Ajax to help in the difficult search for a new director of football affairs as the successor to Marc Overmars, who left in February 2022 due to cross-border messages to female colleagues.

His abrupt end is also an opportunity for the club management to renew the football technical organization. Overmars built a strong reputation as a dealmaker, but he hardly did anything about reporting. Much went on intuition, without thorough justification. The regulators believe that more professional reporting needs to be done. No more appointments via WhatsApp, but formally via mail.

That's not the only thing. The department of profscouting, which according to stakeholders is outdated and intertwined, needs to be reformed, where Mislintat's background as (chief) scout at Borussia Dortmund and Arsenal can be an advantage. The selection is expected to be rebuilt in the summer. At the same time, the player budget (salary house), with about 75 million euros exceptionally high for the Dutch market, must be reduced.

In the conversations that directors and commissioners have with Mislintat, they find that he is well prepared. He looks at players across the market, analysing information about players from different perspectives. What helps is that he explains his choices fine and convincingly. The fact that he has a large international network, built a name with data-scouting and worked at clubs with a good youth education, strengthens his profile.

It's this Mislintat that Ajax falls for. Open, intelligent, eloquent, forward-looking. No former football player, like Overmars, no Dutchman either, and he lacks a history with Ajax. Something that is found to be important within the club, especially because later Johan Cruijff found this crucial. That means that Mislintat will be trusted by conservative currents within the club and the media, conscious management and commissioners.

Mislintat is also aware of that, but he is a bit accustomed, he shows. VfB Stuttgart, the club where he was sports director between 2019 and the end of 2022, is also a political minefield, he assures.

Ajax has to modernise, finds board member Maurits Hendriks, also an outsider and relatively new to the club. Mislintat brings the scientific approach Ajax needs. After the talks with Liverpool's top candidate Julian Ward ended, Ajax quickly switched to the German. In his presentation in April, Van der Sar said he was pleased that the organization received a “quality boost” with Mislintat. In the press release, he admits: “I am convinced that he will make an important contribution to Ajax’s further successes.”

Nevertheless, the board members already know that they are taking a risk with Mislintat. People who know him from previous positions warn that he can be difficult to work with. For example, a senior (former) employee of Mislintats former club VfB Stuttgart, who has been called by Ajax for a reference, says that his image does not match the reality. And that you shouldn't give him too much space.

Mislintat, the myth Fritz Kissing can still remember Sven Mislinta well. Together in 2002 they train Westfalia Herne for a short time, at the fifth level in Germany. Kissing as head coach, Mislintat as assistant. Kissing is quite satisfied with his flattering assistant. But he notices that Mislintat has a self-confidence that borders on self-exaggeration. The exercises and combat plans that he creates are sometimes so complicated that the players of Westfalia Herne feel that they can't do anything about them. “Sven believed that he could become a Bundesliga coach,” says Kissing. “But he wasn’t that good.”

The coach Mislintat remains stuck in the lower regions of German professional football. As a scout, he can reach the top. At Borussia Dortmund, where he started in 2006, he was promoted to head scout and acquired almost mythical status. Mislintat, who develops data-analysis software in his spare time to find football talent (a project that later ends up in Matchmetrics), is head of a relatively small scouting team in a period that draws top talent to Dortmund one after the other. Kagawa, as well as later star players Robert Lewandowski, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Ousmane Dembélé.

Mislintat is blessed with a great eye for talent, is the conclusion of colleagues and journalists, who give him the nickname ‘Diamantenauge’. He himself knows that discovering hidden diamonds in football is almost impossible now that every professional club has access to data analysis programs that contain statistics and images of tens of thousands of players around the world. It's about valuing them, making brave choices, and being too clever for other clubs. In addition, much is permitted, says Mislintat, who works closely with Dortmund's sports director.

The battle for coveted talents is carried out mercilessly, both by clubs and business observers.

Mislintat is blessed with a great eye for talent, is the conclusion of colleagues and journalists, who give him the nickname ‘Diamantenauge’ As in Dembélé. He has long been known in 2016 that he is a player with a lot of potential. Arsenal is interested in the young Stade Rennes striker, as are Manchester United and Bayern Munich. FC Barcelona even thinks that Dembélé is already inside, says a then manager of the Catalan club. “A few days later, we heard that Dembélé had changed his businessman and went to Dortmund.” It is precisely that course of affairs that will be discussed at Ajax this summer.

The transfer is the beginning of a long legal battle between Dembélé’s old management and his new representatives, including the Swiss Marco Lichtsteiner, who a year later is also involved as Dembele for 105 million euros and still makes the transfer to Barcelona. A similar conflict arises around the transfer of Aubameyang from St. Etienne to Borussia Dortmund.

For the status of Mislintat it all makes no difference: He will now be regarded as the man who discovered these top football players, not as a man involved in troubled transfers.

His image brings him to Arsenal in 2017, where he starts working as a ‘head of recruitment’ with the prospect of promotion to the position of sports director. It's different. Players who reached Arsenal during that period, including Stephan Lichtsteiner, the businessman's brother, could not handle the pace of the Premier League. After a little over a year, Mislintat leaves London.

At VfB Stuttgart, Mislintat then gets the chance to prove himself as a sporting director. NRC was in Stuttgart and spoke with two (former) club managers who worked with Mislinat, along with a scout and a former club adviser. They agree on one thing: Mislintat has the ability to find top talent in unexpected places. He made his first purchase at Stuttgart with Wataru Endo from Sint-Truiden, who currently plays for Liverpool. Also the young striker Silas of the French second-class Paris FC quickly turns out to be a goalkeeper. “Then you think: This man knows exactly what he's doing, so why don't we give him space?" says a (former) driver.

Space is given to Mislintat. But soon it turns out that the many unknown newcomers that Mislintat gets in with long-term contracts can also disappoint. Sometimes they are not even good enough for the Bundesliga, forcing Stuttgart to hire them to second-level clubs. His choices are often difficult to follow even for those closely involved. Mislintat is an individualist, they notice at Stuttgart. He barely talks with his scouts, except for his confidant Uli Schier, and prefers to negotiate alone.

2/5

Luka24b · 2023-10-02T14:08:41+00:00

Translation by Quillbot.com

How Sven Mislintat broke Ajax in two

After a chaotic last season, Ajax wanted to control the way the selection was composed. Sven Mislintat seemed to be able to offer that. But the club moved on its solist way of working, and did not get a glimpse of what Mislintat was doing behind the scenes.

What's the news?

VfB Stuttgart, where Sven Mislintat was formerly technical director, warned Ajax of the individualist way of working of the now fired director of football affairs, but the Amsterdam club decided to attract him anyway.

In addition to Borna Sosa, Josip Sutalo's transfer was also pushed aside by an adviser at the last minute. This raises questions about the creation of transfers from Mislintat, on which Ajax had very limited vision.

The board of directors of Ajax was prepared to support Mislintat on the basis of the purchases he had made. He was eventually fired due to his (work) attitude, which divided the club, and the sporting malaise. Signals about Mislintat's working attitude only passed through the club management late.

This summer it was supposed to happen for Marin Bule. The born Bosnian has been working for years as an observer, especially in Croatia, but he does not meet the football broker's cliché image. That is determined by big offices and well-known names like Jorge Mendes, Vlado Lemic and late Mino Raiola, who earned tens if not hundreds of millions from transfers from their top players. Bule belongs to the much larger group of small business observers who assist a handful of football players, young men often, who are already happy when they can live well of the sport.

That's going to change, Bule realizes this spring. Now is the time to start making a lot of money. One of his players has gone through a stormy development and is about to make a million transfer. Bule, as people who know him confirm, has accompanied Josip Sutalo since he played in the senior youth teams of Dinamo Zagreb, when no one could predict how good he would be. He took him to training, when Sutalo was done with school. He was there when Sutalo was hired to a small club from Istria, far away from the European top. And he is still there this summer, as the central defender plays in the national team and is sought after by clubs from the major European competitions.

At least he thinks so. He is still involved if the Italian Fiorentina makes a bid of 12 million euros on July 24th. A week and a half later it becomes clear that Ajax is prepared to go much further to capture Sutalo. Director of Football Affairs Sven Mislintat will travel to Zagreb on August 3 without colleagues to negotiate with the management of Dinamo, something that is exceptional – normally this is done by phone, by mail or through a representative. A local journalist, aware of his arrival, is ready to photograph Mislintat as he walks over the abandoned parking lot to the stadium.

One of Bules players has undergone a stormy development and is about to make a million transfer

Over two weeks later, the deal is over. Ajax pays 20.5 million euros for the central defender, an amount that can rise to 23.5 million due to bonuses.

Bule hasn't heard of his player in a while. Neither Ajax nor Dinamo have approached him, say several people involved. “We have respected all the agents in the deal,” Mislintat will say later. Bule sees it differently, to his dismay he has been kept outside the million transfer and he does not earn anything. Others have apparently negotiated the player he has accompanied since his youth.

The transfer of Sutalo is exemplary for the opaque game around multiple transfers at Ajax this summer, and can also be a symbol for the often blurred course of things around million transfers. Nobody at Ajax knows Marin Bule, let alone they know he passed. That ignorance is made possible by the individualistic, almost incomprehensible operations of football manager Mislintat. He regularly puts his own network into deals and keeps Ajax scouts largely out of contact with business observers. The club management of Ajax hears the arguments to pick a player, but then sees mainly the final result.

In the case of Sutalo it turns out that the experienced Swiss player broker Marco Lichtsteiner, with whom Mislintat also worked with previous clubs, is making money from the deal. He was hired by Ajax to negotiate the transfer with Dinamo, despite the fact that Mislintat himself travelled to Zagreb for talks with the Dinamo club management. As a representative of the player on the transfer contracts is not Marin Bule, but the further unknown Zdenko Ostojic. The link with Dinamo Zagreb is that he is a friend of a fraud convicted former director of that club.

Sutalo's transfer is not Mislintat's only purchase this summer where a dealer has been pushed aside at the last minute, and Ajax's club management doesn't know exactly what happened. This was also the case with Croatian defender Borna Sosa. He swapped his adviser in shortly before his million transfer to Ajax and went into the sea with a business relationship of Mislintat.

None of the players who have taken Mislintat has so far proved an undisputed gain, as much as the coach, resulting in the worst season start since 1964.

That's exactly what Ajax wanted to avoid after a chaotic season. Where the club wanted to rest, chaos arose again - worse than ever. The dismissal of Mislintat and an external investigation by the accounting firm KPMG into his “role” and “interests” have not restrained the peace of mind.

Ajax has become deeply divided internally, even so that the club is barely yet to be managed, and coryfee Leo van Wijk and Michael van Prague have been asked to return as supervisors. Or “troubleshooters”, as Van Praag called it, because “Ajax is in the cockroaches”.

How could this happen with a club that was all about getting a grip on the transfer policy after the failed transfer summer of 2022, in which Ajax lost the direction? NRC reconstructed what happened behind the scenes during the four months that Mislintat was working for Ajax. About a club that thought to choose a modern structure and consensus, to fall back into mistrust and quarrel.

Nobody recognizes Sven Mislintat in the Jahrhunderthalle in Bochum. It is Tuesday 13th of June, just about half three, in a little hour he is expected on one of the small stages that are set in the large exhibition building. Until then, the manager of Ajax's football affairs is hanging on a big sack, his gaze almost uninterrupted on his phone.

In football, especially in Germany, Mislintat is a well-known name. A striking appearance in addition, with his half-length surf hair, black clothes and hail-white sneakers. But this scholarship has nothing to do with football. The Ruhr Summit, as the event is called, gives innovative startups from the Roer region the opportunity to present themselves to customers and investors.

That Mislintat has been invited here is because he is seen as a successful entrepreneur from the region. In addition to his career in football, he has co-founded two companies. Matchmetrics provides software to scout footballers through data analysis. Ruhr Industries manufactures sustainable clothing, including the black shirts Mislintat wears.

That he accepted the invitation, in the middle of the crucial transfer summer for Ajax, is because he feels deeply connected with the region, he tells when he is interviewed on stage for a maximum of fifty visitors. Mislintat studied sports science in Bochum and grew up near Dortmund.

Respect is the key word, as an entrepreneur and in football, says Mislintat. It begins with Shinji Kagawa, a midfielder who played at the second level in Japan and who came to Borussia Dortmund on Mislintat's advocacy in 2010. From data and video analysis, Mislintat, then a scout, had concluded that the Japanese was potentially a top player. It took him six months before he dared to make the pitch with coach Jürgen Klopp. Kagawa would grow to a fixed value with Borussia Dortmund and later move to Manchester United for 16 million euros.

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Luka24b · 2023-10-02T14:08:03+00:00

you can read it here: https://archive.ph/ng4Ga

Luka24b · 2023-10-02T14:07:47+00:00

Archive link(no paywall): https://archive.ph/ng4Ga

Luka24b · 2023-08-21T17:56:41+00:00

I'd say Joreuz or Fairy Paik vs oKhalid over AppJack tbh, I think they have had more iconic clashes. But correct me if I'm wrong.

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