Ajax hopes to announce next week which head coach will be in charge of the group starting next season. This is what club watcher Mike Verweij reports The Telegraph Saturday morning at least. According to the reporter, the Amsterdam team was prepared to wait for Erik ten Hag, but now that it appears that the former successful coach will also be working at Manchester United next season, it may be Graham Potter or Francesco Farioli.
The content of the head coach position has been keeping people busy in Amsterdam for weeks, if not months. John van ‘t Schip took over from the resigned Maurice Steijn at the end of last year, but upon his appointment it became clear that the intention was for another name to sit on the bench in the new season. According to Verweij, Ten Hag was the dream candidate of technical director Alex Kroes, but earlier this week it was revealed that the Tukker will most likely remain head coach of Manchester United. The Amsterdam club management is now also said to ‘realize’ that a return of Ten Hag will be a ‘difficult story’.
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“Ajax has no choice but to choose from the two remaining candidates Potter and Farioli”, writes Verweij. Potter has been explicitly linked to the position of head coach at the Johan Cruijff ArenA for a long time. The Englishman switched from Brighton & Hove Albion to Chelsea in the autumn of 2022, but was released by that club a few months later. Potter has been without an employer since then. The Algemeen Dagblad recently reported that Potter had rebuffed Ajax’s first advantage, but that does not mean that he is no longer in the picture. Reporter Tim van Duijn of Voetbal International claimed that the Briton is the ‘number one’ candidate to replace Van ‘t Schip.
Farioli is also in the picture for the head coach position in Amsterdam. He currently works at OGC Nice, where he still has an ongoing contract. Ajax would therefore have to pay a transfer fee for him. According to Verweij, there is currently no top favorite for the position of head coach in Amsterdam. “Although many assume that Potter, who was fired at Chelsea, is now number 1 and OGC Nice coach Farioli is the alternative, sources around the negotiations say that it is fifty-fifty, with chess being played on two boards at the same time. The brand new technical director Kroes uses the ‘English method’”which simply means talking to multiple candidates to ‘maintain a good negotiating position’. “If one is financially too high up, they switch to the next.”
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