Overmars bringing back Ajax glory days
Technical director tells Jonathan Liew how he is trying to defy odds and build a great team again
There is a framed photograph on the back wall of Marc Overmars’s office at Ajax’s training ground. A young Johan Cruyff, no more than 20 years old, crouches alongside three of his team-mates from the iconic Ajax side of the late 1960s: Klaas Nuninga, Sjaak Swart and Piet Keizer. It is the first thing you see as you walk through the door, and its significance is clear. This is a club who cherish their legends, protecting their memories against the attrition of time.
But then, you do not need photographs to sense Ajax’s history. It lives, walks and breathes all around you. That’s Aron Winter, the Under-19s coach, carrying a bag of footballs on his back. That’s Dennis Bergkamp, the assistant manager, dispensing advice to young strikers on the training pitch. And looking out over the pitch from his first-floor office is technical director Overmars who, in his smart business suit, could scarcely look more different from the winger of his 1990s peak.
With Louis van Gaal’s Ajax, where he won the European Cup in 1995, and then with Arsène Wenger’s Arsenal, Overmars was one of the finest Dutch footballers of his generation. Since returning to the club in Cruyff ’s “Velvet Revolution” of 2012, Overmars has been tasked with bringing back the glory days to Ajax. And tomorrow night they play Manchester United in Stockholm, their first European final in two decades.
“The project that we started 4½ years ago,” Overmars says, “is to build and create a team like the one we had in our time. A team so strong that they could play against any team, without fear. We knew it was almost impossible, because the world is changing a lot.”
Two decades ago, United against Ajax would have been a meeting of equals. Now, United generate the revenue of seven Ajaxes. They have spent more on transfer fees in the past three seasons than Ajax have in their history. Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s salary is more than Ajax’s entire wage bill. “They are Goliath,” Overmars admits. “We are David. But to create that – to reach the final with a football budget of €21million [£18million] – that makes me proud.”
What you may not know is how close Overmars came to becoming a Manchester United player in 1996. “That was a very close one,” he says. What happened? “I broke my knee. I think [Alex] Ferguson was really interested. United and Arsenal were the two interested. But I broke my ligaments, and then I was out for eight months. Afterwards, Arsenal kept the faith, which I am really grateful to Wenger for.” There is a certain irony, then, in the fact that it was Overmars’s goal at Old Trafford that proved decisive in Wenger’s first Premier League title in 1998. “A special moment,” Overmars remembers.
After retiring from the game in 2004 with Barcelona, Overmars was looking for a new project. With a natural interest in business – he co-owns a restaurant in his home town and helps run the family’s property investment firm – Overmars was drawn to the upstairs world of transfer deals and recruitment strategies. “I worked for five years with a second division club, Go Ahead Eagles, which was financially broke. Together with Hans de Vroome, the chairman, we built it up, and they were promoted in five years. That’s where I found my way. I didn’t want to be a coach, didn’t want to be a trainer. So that’s where I found what I was good at. Then Ajax came in with the revolution. With Cruyff.”
Elko Born, a football writer and lifelong Ajax fan, describes them as a club defined by two “currents”: pragmatism and romance. The Cruyff team of the 1960s and 1970s represented romance; the Van Gaal team of the 1990s pragmatism. At the start of the decade these two competing visions were tearing Ajax apart. The football was