How a five-year slide, boardroom instability, and coaching merry-go-round changed recruitment in Amsterdam
For years, Ajax recruitment had a familiar rhythm: Find the next high-upside teenager or emerging talent, give him a clear role in an aggressive, recognisable first team, let Europe advertise him, sell at the right moment, then start again. It was not merely a transfer strategy. It was the club’s economic engine and cultural identity.
But Ajax’s recent recruitment points to a different reality. Jordan Henderson (before his eventual move back to the Premier League to join Brentford), Ko Itakura, Kasper Dolberg, Takehiro Tomiyasu, and Oleksandr Zinchenko do not follow the traditional pattern of Ajax as a launchpad for tomorrow’s biggest names. Neither did the reported interest in Dani Ceballos, a 29-year-old midfielder with elite-level experience rather than major resale potential.
These are not random deals, and Ajax have not abandoned youth. They did, however, have become less willing to ask their youth to carry the entire building.
League indications
The league finishes tell a story that will have surely influenced their strategy.
Ajax went from Dutch champions in 2022 to fifth twice in three seasons. The 2024-25 campaign briefly suggested recovery, but it ended with perhaps the most painful reminder of the club’s fragility: Ajax surrendered a nine-point lead over PSV with five matches remaining and finished second by just a point.
Last season brought another drop. Ajax finished fifth, 28 points behind champions PSV, and were left preparing for the UEFA Conference League qualifying rather than the Champions League.
| Season | Eredivisie finish | European outcome |
|---|---|---|
| 2021-22 | 1st | Champions League round of 16 |
| 2022-23 | 3rd | Europa League knockout play-off exit |
| 2023-24 | 5th | Conference League round of 16 |
| 2024-25 | 2nd | Europa League round of 16 |
| 2025-26 | 5th | Champions League league-phase exit |
That decline matters beyond the table. Senior-team success is an accelerator for young talent. A teenager playing in a winning Ajax side receives more meaningful minutes, more European visibility, and more tactical protection. He becomes part of a well-oiled machine rather than being asked to repair it while it is moving.
When the first team is unstable, young players are often handed responsibility without enough structure around them. Some survive it, but very few thrive at the level required to become the next big money transfer.
European value
Ajax’s European journey has become a useful measure of that instability.
In 2021-22, Erik ten Hag’s Ajax reached the Champions League round of 16 after winning all six group-stage matches. They were eliminated narrowly by Benfica, but remained a side opponents respected and scouts watched closely.
Since then, the trajectory has fallen away.
Ajax were eliminated by Union Berlin in the Europa League knockout play-offs in 2022-23. The following season, they dropped from the Europa League into the Conference League, survived Bodø/Glimt after extra time, then were swept aside 4-0 on aggregate by Aston Villa.
There was a modest European recovery under Francesco Farioli in 2024-25. Ajax reached the Europa League round of 16, but Eintracht Frankfurt beat them 6-2 on aggregate. The following season, Ajax returned to the Champions League’s opening phase and won only two of eight games.
That fall in European relevance affects recruitment in two directions. First, it makes Ajax less attractive to the very best young prospects, who increasingly have options across Europe’s multi-club networks and major academies. Second, it reduces the premium attached to Ajax-developed players. The club’s historic advantage was not simply that it produced talented footballers. It was that those footballers were visible in serious Champions League matches, often showing confidence in an integral role.
Ajax’s development model is strongest when domestic minutes, European exposure, and tactical identity reinforce one another. Recently, too many of those ingredients have been missing at the same time.
The boardroom crisis
The collapse was not only sporting. Ajax’s 2023 summer transfer window became entangled with questions around Sven Mislintat’s recruitment process, particularly the Borna Sosa deal. Mislintat was dismissed in September 2023 after only a few months as director of football, with Ajax citing a lack of broad support within the organisation.
A forensic investigation later found no formal conflict of interest in the Sosa transfer, but it was still deeply damaging.
At a club whose identity depends on confidence in player identification, development, and selling, public uncertainty around the recruitment process is a serious problem. Ajax were trying to rebuild their squad while supporters, shareholders, and the wider football world questioned whether the decision-making structure itself was sound.
Then came the Alex Kroes case. Kroes was suspended as Ajax CEO in April 2024 after the club said he had bought more than 17,000 Ajax shares shortly before his planned appointment was announced. The Dutch financial regulator later imposed no sanction on Ajax or Kroes, though it warned Kroes and told Ajax to strengthen its handling of insider information.
That matters in recruitment. A good recruitment department needs clear authority, consistent role profiles, and trust between the manager, technical director, scouts, academy, and board. Ajax spent too much of this period trying to restore those basics.
Coaching Changes
Since Erik ten Hag left in 2022, Ajax have moved through Alfred Schreuder, John Heitinga, Maurice Steijn, Hedwiges Maduro, John van ’t Schip, Francesco Farioli, Heitinga again, Fred Grim, and Oscar García before appointing Míchel this summer.
Not every change represented a completely different tactical universe. But the constant resets made coherent squad-building far more difficult. A recruitment department can plan properly when it knows what its manager wants from a left-back, a centre-back, a holding midfielder, or a winger over multiple windows. It becomes much harder when coaches keep changing, and each one inherits a different squad, different pressure, and different short-term priorities.
One manager may need a left-footed centre-back comfortable defending a high line. The next may want a physically dominant defender who can protect transitions. One may value an attacking midfielder between the lines. Another may need an extra runner in midfield to cover for an unstable press.
The player may remain talented but his fit may simply disappear. That is especially dangerous for academy graduates. Young players usually need clarity more than versatility. They need to know what role they are being developed for, what weaknesses they must improve, and where their pathway sits in the senior squad. Instead, Ajax’s young players have often had to develop while the senior game model was still being rewritten.
Recruitment shift more function than age
It would not be right to say Ajax have suddenly stopped recruiting young players.
Midfielder Oscar Gloukh joined at 21 on a long-term contract and represented a classic Ajax investment: creative, technically gifted, development-minded, and potentially valuable in the future. Goalkeeper Joeri Heerkens arrived at 19. Winger Raúl Moro and striker Maher Carrizo also fit the more traditional pursuit of upside.
But the balancing weight has changed. Henderson was the clearest sign of the new logic. His signing in January 2024 brought little obvious resale potential, but it gave Ajax a captain with elite experience at a moment when the team needed authority and calm. He made 57 appearances and played a significant role in Ajax’s return to the Champions League in 2024-25.
Itakura and Dolberg followed with different functions. Itakura gave Ajax a more mature defensive profile. Dolberg represented something even more revealing: the return of a player the club already understood, someone with a proven record in Amsterdam rather than a speculative bet on a distant ceiling.
Tomiyasu and Zinchenko carried more risk because of their injury records and recent availability. Yet their profile still made sense. Ajax were looking for players who had already operated at an elite level, understood tactical responsibility, and could raise the standard around them.
The Ceballos pursuit belongs in this conversation despite not becoming a transfer. As of mid-June, reports indicated that he had rejected Ajax in favour of seeking a return to Real Betis. But Ajax’s interest still showed the kind of midfielder they were seeking: a player expected to control matches now, not necessarily become the next major sale later.
The case for Hato
Jorrel Hato is the counter-argument Ajax need. The Dutch left-back joined the academy in 2018, debuted for the first team at 16, played 111 senior matches, became Ajax’s youngest member of the Club of 100 before leaving for Chelsea in 2025 for €44.18 million.
His journey remains a textbook Ajax success story: academy development, serious senior responsibility, international recognition, and a premium sale. The uncomfortable question for Ajax is whether Hato is the first member of a new generation, or the exceptional final product of an unsettled period.
Final thoughts
Ajax do not need to choose between academy football and experienced recruitment. In fact, the best version of this strategy is one where the two reinforce each other. An experienced defender should make a young centre-back’s minutes safer. A composed midfielder should give an academy No. 8 more time to learn. A proven striker should reduce the pressure on a teenage forward to become the team’s entire attack. Leadership should create a development environment, not occupy it.
The danger is that experienced signings become a series of short-term patches: expensive, injury-prone, and disconnected from a broader playing identity. The opportunity is that they create the stability Ajax have lacked since 2022.
Míchel’s arrival offers a chance to realign the balance. His task is not only to improve Ajax’s results, but also to give the recruitment department and academy a stable reference point again.
Ajax’s past success did not depend on fielding the youngest possible line-up. They succeeded because young players were introduced into teams with a clear game model, senior leadership, and enough quality to win. The club does not need to abandon its talent factory. It needs to rebuild the floor beneath it.