Ajax have not won the Eredivisie since the 2021-2022 campaign, which is a fact that would’ve seemed unthinkable just a few years earlier when the club reached a Champions League semi-final and produced some of Europe’s most sought-after young players.
Since Erik ten Hag left for Manchester United in the summer of 2022, however, the Dutch side have gone through nine different head coaches, permanent or interim, and finished outside the Eredivisie’s top four in two of the last three completed seasons.
I can’t help but feel sad with the decline of Ajax and many other great European names – all have been relegated to also fans and feeder clubs by the CL money, the PL money and UEFA’s complete incompetence
— Basel Gooner (@baselgooner.bsky.social) 22 October 2025 at 20:52
The decline is not down to just one single failure, but rather several that fed off each other. There has been a boardroom that fell apart, a coaching carousel that never let any of those given the job survive long enough to make an impact and a financial model that is built on selling players as soon as they become good enough.
That is all well and good for incomings, but it leaves the squad short and also relies on the club continuing to produce players that other teams want to spend money buying.
A Boardroom at War & Managerial Upheaval
The unravelling of Ajax’s fortunes arguably began off the pitch. Marc Overmars resigned as Director of Football in the February of 2022, after sending inappropriate messages to female colleagues. Ajax went well over a year without naming a permanent replacement for him, then when Sven Mislintat eventually arrived, his approach reportedly caused friction inside the club to the extent that he was gone within a couple of years too. Chief Executive Edwin van der Sar stepped down in 2023 after a disappointing season, citing sheer exhaustion.
With two of the club’s senior football figures gone within 18 months of each other, recruitment and squad planning lacked the continuity a club of Ajax’s size normally relies on. Meanwhile, on the touchline, the turnover has been just as disruptive. Alfred Schreuder replaced Ten Hag, but he lasted for less than a season, being sacked after a run of poor results that included a 1-6 home defeat to Napoli in the Champions League. Maurice Steijn arrived for the following campaign and was gone within four months.
John van ’t Schip finished that season, then Francesco Farioli took Ajax to within a whisker of the title in 2024-2025 before he also departed. John Heitinga left his role as Arne Slot’s deputy at Liverpool for a second spell at Ajax that lasted only a few months before Fred Grim and then Oscar Garcia took interim charge. Míchel is now the ninth man to take charge since Ten Hag left, so it’s little wonder that things haven’t been as smooth sailing as those that support de Godenzonen would have wished.
Things might be rescuable for the Lancers, but right now it feels as though they’ve never been further away from the team that dominated European football.