According to Mike Verweij, Kjetil Knutsen has a good chance of becoming Ajax’s new trainer. The journalist annex Ajax-watcher van The Telegraph do expect that the Amsterdam club will have to offer a substantial salary to be able to appoint the successful trainer of the Norwegian FK Bodö / Glimt as the successor to John Heitinga. According to Verweij’s information, Knutsen has a separate earnings model at his current employer: he earns from outgoing transfers from Bodö/Glimt and that can add up nicely.
“I think Knutsen is seriously in the picture at Ajax,” says Verweij in the football podcast Kick-Off. “I received a profile from him last week and it contained all kinds of things that characterized him as a trainer. Attacking and attractive football with an idea on the ball. Sven Mislintat (director of football affairs, ed.) Was asked this week what the profile of the new trainer should be and he said offensive and attractive football, an idea on the ball and a good residual organization. It was like he spooned that on.”
“I also asked Mislintat if it was very important for the new coach to have experience in the group stage of the Champions League. Knutsen does not have that. Then he started laughing and said: ‘It doesn’t matter, because Ajax won’t be playing the Champions League next season’. Valentijn Driessen couldn’t laugh at ‘that guy’s stupid remark’. “You want to go to the Champions League. That is the level where you want to act as an Ajax player. That’s where the bar is. Mislintat is already setting the bar at Europa League level,” the daily newspaper’s chief of football sighs.
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Verweij thinks that Bodö/Glimt can look for a successor for Knutsen, although he has heard from colleagues in Scandinavia that it will not be easy for Ajax. “Knutsen has a special contract. I heard that he would say fifteen to twenty percent, let me put it that way because it is information from others, on transfers from Bodö/Glimt. That is out of the question at Ajax. That is not going to happen with a trainer.”
“If Knutsen is smart, he will first let players go to Ajax, he will collect money and then go himself”, Driessen adds. Verweij: “Because of this construction, Knutsen earns almost a Premier League salary at Bodö/Glimt. Ajax therefore has to dig into its pockets quite a bit.” The contract of 54-year-old Knutsen will continue for another year. The Norwegian’s agent was in the Netherlands in recent weeks and spoke to Mislintat several times, the director of Ajax acknowledged.
