Valentijn Driessen believes Ajax should seriously consider appointing Arne Slot as Míchel Sánchez's successor. The De Telegraaf journalist sees no improvement whatsoever under the Spanish coach and thinks Slot, who is currently out of work, is the right person to get the team playing football again.
After Ajax's embarrassing 2-1 defeat to Hajduk Split in the Conference League, Driessen made the case for Slot on the Kick-off podcast. "I would look at Arne Slot. Why not? This is a dead end. To get these lads playing football, you need someone who can get through to them."
For Driessen, Slot has precisely the qualities Ajax currently lack. "Slot is an excellent communicator, but he is also very good tactically and in terms of his training methods. That is what he is known for," said the journalist, who has serious doubts about how Míchel gets his message across to the players.
Jeroen Kapteijns also sharply criticised the Ajax coach's communication skills on the podcast. "You can't listen to Míchel's English; it's an absolute disaster," said the reporter, stressing that working with an interpreter also causes problems. "Football is in the details, but you have to be able to identify and explain them. If you don't have a good command of the language, it's very difficult to get into those details."
As for the players, Driessen fears they will eventually stop taking their coach seriously. "Players will very quickly take advantage of that and laugh about it. Then you go into the dressing room and people are laughing, and you think: here he comes again. Once you start laughing at someone, you've long since stopped listening to what he has to say," said the journalist.
Ajax once again looked completely disjointed that evening, according to Driessen. "It really looked like nothing at all. There was absolutely no team and everyone was just doing their own thing. They were eleven isolated individuals."
Since Liverpool dismissed him in May, Slot has been without a club. He turned down the Netherlands head coach's job last summer. The 47-year-old coach said in August that he would rather work with players on the training pitch every day than take a job as a national-team coach. That suggests he would prefer a return to club football, although it is not known whether Ajax would be an option for Slot.
Driessen would not even rule out Ajax parting ways with the Spanish staff who came to Amsterdam with Míchel. "If that is in the club's interests, you should do it," he said, before also questioning Jordi Cruyff's approach. "We're now halfway through October and you can't see any improvement whatsoever. You should have seen it long ago. This coach isn't showing any improvement either."