Ajax's Empty Chair: De Jong Isn't the Question — the Map of Authority Is

One in the morning at a tea stall in Zindabazar, Sylhet. The boy on the next stool turned his phone screen toward me and asked, "If Ajax just makes Siem de Jong managing director, everything gets fixed, right?" I took a sip and told him that a CV with 276 appearances contains 276 appearances. It does not contain a balance sheet.

Those 276 matches, 88 goals, 52 assists, four Eredivisie titles — a name woven into Ajax's blood, and the affection is real. I found the fairy tale. That fairy tale is also the most dangerous thing in this story, because it quietly buries the actual question.

The news is bigger in its structure than in its name. Managing director Menno Geelen announced his departure unexpectedly; he is expected to step down in April 2027, though his contract runs to June 2027. The supervisory board plans to use an external recruitment agency. In the words of Mike Verweij of De Telegraaf, Ajax will initially look for a "bigger hitter" — someone more senior, with a more corporate profile.

Seen that way, De Jong is a half-promise. His name circulates internally, he acts as a sounding board for players and coaches, he completed an Ajax traineeship in 2026 and joined Jordi Cruyff's staff. None of that proves he can carry an institution's balance sheet.

Cruyff's two-year contract, plus Valentijn Driessen's public remark about how the new managing director must work with him — put those two facts together and you understand the argument is not about who arrives. It is about who gets their hands on which money.

Ajax's model is simple, and precisely for that reason fragile. The academy produces, the club sells, the proceeds refill the academy. That engine needs two kinds of heads: one guards the money, one guards the football. The managing director handles financial oversight, corporate governance, stakeholder management, commercial strategy. The technical director handles players, coaches, scouting, long-term football planning. When those two heads sit in the same chair, or when the boundary blurs, conflict arrives in exactly four places — approval of the transfer budget, managerial appointments, contract renewals, and the size of academy investment.

The romance of a playing career does not help here. 276 matches teach you the language of a dressing room; they do not teach you the nerve to sign off on a twenty-five million euro deal. A spreadsheet can track a pass, but it cannot track a shiver — and the person in the executive chair has to account for that shiver every single day.

The decision to search externally is itself a statement. An outside recruitment agency means money, time and a documented process. If the board believed internal familiarity was sufficient, it would not spend that. The real test sits in the gap between April 2027, when Geelen hands over operational duties, and June 2027, when his contract expires. Does knowledge transfer happen there, or do his commercial relationships walk out with him?

My Italian birth and Dhaka working life tell me both football cultures make the same mistake at moments like this. Italy has a long habit of handing directorships to club legends — sometimes it works beautifully, sometimes it ends badly. South Asia has an even stronger habit of placing former stars in administrative posts, and the question is almost never asked: can this man read a budget?

Still, I have to write the other side, because a hot-take merchant who cannot break his own argument is just noise.

The outside corporate man everyone treats as the solution may be the biggest risk of all. Ajax's success has never been about outspending the market; it is the patience of sell-and-reinvest. An executive under pressure to grow commercial revenue wants visible results fast — expensive contracts, a big-name coach, a star signing. Two seasons of that can break the club's own engine. This is where De Jong's real value sits: daily relationships, internal communication with Cruyff, an ear for the pulse of a dressing room. The transfer market is a confessional where nobody actually confesses; the power relations inside a club are much the same.

At 55, I trust the terrace more than the terminal, but on this one point the terrace's emotion is no use to me. The terrace wants a familiar face; the institution needs a durable structure. They are not always the same person.

So here is my conditional column, with a number and a date attached: before 1 April 2027, Ajax will name an externally recruited managing director, and Siem de Jong will not get that chair — he will instead receive expanded responsibilities in football operations. If the opposite happens and De Jong is made managing director directly, then my calculation is this — within 18 months the club will undergo another organisational restructure, because financial approval and football decision-making will have ended up at the same table.

Write 31 March 2027 in your diary. The name Ajax announces before that date will not be a footballer's name; it will be the club's organisational identity for the next decade. And the question asked at that Sylhet tea stall will still be unresolved: when the familiar face and the capable hand are the same person, the story is beautiful — but a football club does not run on stories. It runs on a balance sheet.