The Tandem is Broken

The Tandem is Broken

12/08/2015

In the late 80s and early 90s, they played together 108 times for Ajax before they left together to Inter and a small four years ago, they stood side by side when Cruyff started a legal action to revert the appointment of Van Gaal, Blind and Sturkenboom, but now it seems the once famous tandem, Wim Jonk and Dennis Bergkamp, is definitively broken.

It started so promising: Wim Jonk as head of the youth department and Dennis Bergkamp as liaison between De Toekomst and the first team and as a guardian of the Ajax culture throughout the organization. Two people who had been through a lot together and with both a strong Ajax past would make the appropriate changes at Ajax.

Although the Plan Cruyff included more than just the youth department, this was seen as a very important part. In the eyes of amongst others Cruyff the level of the basic skills of youth players that flowed into the first team was not high enough. In addition, Ajax was in a bad financial situation because too many players were bought. A new situation where there would be more use of their own youth players, and only players would be purchased as immediate reinforcement for the base of Ajax 1 should be the new situation. The goal was to eventually be able to compete again with the top teams of Europe.

Less than half a year after the aforementioned lawsuit Marc Overmars was appointed in 2012 as director. Officially this was not a role as technical director, but in reality it was, which was strange because during the trial an important argument to reverse the appointment of Louis van Gaal and Danny Blind was that according to the plan Cruijff there would be no technical director. This appointment led to confusion that arose over who was in control at De Toekomst.

Logically especially Wim Jonk had difficulty with the situation. In practice, he had not only to do with Marc Overmars, but also with Dennis Bergkamp and Frank de Boer who co-decided on staff at De Toekomst. It therefore proved difficult to execute the plans he and his right hand man Ruben Jongkind had, what was even more complicated because it proved impossible to get the budget deemed necessary from the management.

Wim Jonk saw as way out of the difficult situation for him as the only solution to clearly define the responsibilities, duties and powers, in which situations his role should be that of a the director of the youth department. The rest of the technical heart did not agree and felt that on matters that were not clearly defined the technical heart should decide democratically. Wim Jonk felt repeatedly outvoted by the rest, so he finally decided not to participate in the meetings of the technical heart. From the rest of the technical heart no one, also not Dennis Bergkamp, was involved in the daily affairs at De Toekomst either, so that two camps were formed.

Because both sides clung to their positions, mediation efforts were unsuccessful. Eventually, management decided, after consultation with the Supervisory Board to initiate a dismissal procedure for Wim Jonk, and last week Wim Jonk and Ajax agreed on the termination of his contract.

Clearly this was not, as Ajax claimed, only a labor dispute between Ajax and an employee. After Wim Jonk left, now also Ruben Jongkind and six other employees of the youth department left. Perhaps in the near future, once we see who will be assigned at the youth development, we will better understand where the vision of Wim Jonk, contents wise, clashed with the rest, because there is so far little clarity about this. It could have to do with the fact that Jonk and Jongkind saw improvements in the youth department largely by attracting people from outside the soccer world, and that the rest of the technical heart was missing the Ajax (or soccer) culture in those new additions. If this would prove to be the underlying cause of the conflict, it would in our view be unnecessary and unfortunate. Unnecessary because we think by very good cooperation those people from outside soccer can learn the clubs culture, and unfortunate because the youth department will now miss this new influence, which possibly had turned out very beneficial.

Filed under: Dennis Bergkamp, Wim Jonk

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