In Schroder’s Thoughts, AjaxDaily writer Lukas Schroder reviews the last week from the perspective of a somewhat cynical Ajax-fan. New pieces will come out every wednesday.
If you’ve been reading my columns the last couple of months, you’d probably guess my piece this week will be about Nemanja Gudelj again. You’d also be mistaken, unfortunately. My mission has been completed, and it looks like we’ve seen the last of him in an Ajax-shirt, which is amazing. My column also won’t be about John Guidetti, but it is nice to see he is still obsessed with us. No, this week’s piece will be about Peter Bosz, and why he remains to be the right choice to manage Ajax.
I personally don’t really like Bosz. Whenever he appears on TV, I always get a sense of awkwardness. He has the appearance and attitude of a dockworker from Rotterdam, and it just seems like an uncomfortable matchup to make him manager of Ajax. In a lot of ways, he is the exact opposite of the stylish, media-friendly Frank de Boer, and that’s exactly why he is turning out to be the fresh face Ajax needs right now.
Bosz has started working in Amsterdam five months ago, and he already banned two players out of his squad, both of whom are demanding starting spots even though they have done nothing to warrant that. He has shown a complete and utter disregard for the financial value of his squad and has shown little intent of letting the Ajax academy get in the way of making his preferred starting eleven. In many ways, he is the absolute nightmare of director of football Marc Overmars, who can do nothing besides sitting and watching the most valuable assets of the squad leave for a bargain-price, only because they can’t cope mentally with being on the bench for a couple of months.
If you take a look at the squad Bosz has fielded the last two months, five out of eleven players probably shouldn’t be here next summer. Those five being Nick Viergever, Lasse Schone, Joel Veltman, Davy Klaassen and Bertrand Traoré. However, Bosz is not willing to commit to a long-term vision and chooses instant success over the personal development of some of the younger players, again choosing to act opposite of ‘Plan Cruyff’ (a plan which the board of Ajax has stopped acting like two years ago, but that’s another column of its own).
Considering this, one could call the appointment of Bosz a brilliant piece of mismanagement. I think it might be the best decision Overmars has taken since being appointed DoF. Like it or not, Bosz is slaughtering the rut Ajax landed in during the final two years of De Boer. If his decisions turn out to be successful remains to be seen, but the truth is Bosz is doing this differently from his predecessors. Just like his preferred style of football, he doesn’t like to play it safe, just as he doesn’t give a damn about what the fans think of him and his choices. He does it his way, and it sure as hell makes this season more exciting than the last three combined.
The football might not be as sparkling as many has hoped when Bosz took over, but it also isn’t as terrible as some want to make you believe. Ever since he took over, we had some spectacular games, we’re doing fine in the Eredivisie and for the first time since god knows when, we’re having a comfortable group stage in Europe for once. Taking all this into account, I think that if we give Bosz time to do his own thing, and trust him completely in his ways of man-management, he can make the coming years the most exciting seasons since Luis Suárez left. I can’t wait.