This article now is clearly from Steijn. He blames the whole world and can’t accept that he lacks skills and insight to be trainer at a club like Ajax. It’s very telling that again other people are blamed, and Steijn is the victim. Who do you think called the papers?
Steijn has been setting up excuses for his eventual failure pretty much since day 1.
The thing is I do think there are some valid excuses like he didn’t get any of the players he asked for and the whole ‘build a squad while the competition is already on its way’ thing.
Berghuis and Maduro ‘backstabbing’ probably came after those two concluded that he’s not good enough for ajax. I think that part is bs.
But it wasn’t made easy for Steijn, that much is obvious as well.
The players that he wanted, baring Olij, would all have asked for above/significantly above the now salary cap that the board had placed on Mislintat.
And it was known for a long time that we had to sell before bringing anyone in, with Mislintat only getting the go ahead after the first part of the Timber money being officially on the bank balance.
So, sure it wasn’t easy for Steijn, but that was because the board was being difficult, not Mislintat.
I agree it’s a legitimate excuse. It did sound like Steijn actually had a much better idea what the squad needed than that surf fraud.
At the same time you can’t go and throw all those signings under the bus literally the first game things go wrong. How are you supposed to build a cohesive squad that way?
He also chose to play those guys out of position immediately when he easily could have waited to integrate them if they weren’t ready. He definitely started making excuses for his dismissal from the start.
