Football Season Guide

Ajax came within touching distance of claiming the league title at the end of the previous season. A win in Doetinchem against De Graafschap would have sealed the deal for the Amsterdam side, but a poor performance resulted in a 1-1 draw, which led to the fact that PSV Eindhoven retained the league title. After two years without becoming champions in the Eredivisie, Ajax will surely be aiming to put things right to lift the trophy in May 2017. A new coach has been presented in Amsterdam to reach that goal, after Frank de Boer decided to leave Ajax. He needed a new challenge after having been the Ajax coach for 5,5 years, during which he claimed four successive league titles in his first 3,5 years. Peter Bosz has become the new Ajax coach. The former coach of amongst others Heracles Almelo and Vitesse is famous, because of his aim to let his teams play attractive football, so the Ajax fans are really curious what the new season will bring them. A few players have left the club, but those were not regular players during the previous season. Danish wingers Viktor Fischer and Lucas Andersen, who both joined Ajax when they were 16 year old, decided to go for a new adventure in a new country. Defenders Ricardo van Rhijn and Mike van der Hoorn, who were both back-up players during the previous season, also decided to try to give their career a new impulse outside the Netherlands. The Amsterdam side has added two Colombian players to the squad. Defender Davinson Sanchez and striker Mateo Cassierra are two talented players from South America and quite a lot is expected from them. Due to the fact that Ajax had a very young, though talented, but not very experienced squad last year, they decided to add 32-year old German defender Heiko Westermann to the squad. The return of John Heitinga last year turned out to be a huge disappointment for the player and for the fans as well, so hopefully they will take more advantage of the presence of Westermann. It looked likely that striker Arek Milik would stay in Amsterdam at least until the winter break or maybe even until the end of the upcoming season. However, he caught the attention of several clubs, when he reached the quarterfinals of Euro 2016 with Poland. Napoli were able to pay a huge prize for the Polish striker and it will be interesting to see what Ajax will do with the money before the transfer window closes, because it seems like the Amsterdam side will have to add some more quality to the squad to compete with PSV Eindhoven for the league title. Other important players, like for example Joel Veltman, Riechedly Bazoer and Davy Klaassen, decided to stay at Ajax, so the core of the Ajax team this season will be pretty much the same as last year.