Marciano Vink and Cristian Willaert believe Ajax have been dealt a bitter blow by losing Kasper Dolberg for the rest of the season. It emerged on Wednesday evening that the 29-year-old striker will not play again this season because of a cruciate ligament injury.
During ESPN's Voetbalpraat, the pair discussed Dolberg's development this season. He started the campaign as the third-choice striker behind Marcos Leonardo and Tolu Arokodare, but still fought his way back into the starting XI.
"I'm a Dolberg fan," Vink begins. "And the strange thing is: he was actually third choice this season. He was allowed to leave. But in recent weeks he was playing enormously well. And he really was that striker you could play into and then build from."
"Then Tolu would come on and something would happen again. So with these two totally different strikers, they had actually found quite a good formula, with one starting and the other coming on, or vice versa."
Willaert is just as surprised by Dolberg's development. "Do you know what's nice? Last year Óscar García said he did not contribute when Ajax did not have the ball. He could not use him, so only if he changed something would he use Dolberg again," the reporter begins.
"Then this season came around. Leonardo and Tolu were still not fit at the start. In all those matches at the beginning of the season, Dolberg was in the starting XI. But everyone said he would be sold. Then he was not sold and everyone thought he would end up out on a limb."
"But Leonardo did not deliver, Tolu had an injury at one point, Dolberg came in and, I think, played well. But what I find very striking, and I don't know how Míchel managed it... I see him tracking back, pressing and winning the ball. Something I had never, literally never, seen from him. Not in his first spell at Ajax, when he was eighteen, either. Not for a single moment. And I have no explanation for it."
"You expect that eagerness from a 29-year-old player who joins a club and hears from his manager that he is without doubt his first-choice striker. But in a situation where he was actually the third striker, Míchel somehow motivated him so much that he is doing things I had never seen him do before," Willaert concludes his eulogy.