First Days of the Rest of Our Lives

Let’s move on shall we? Let’s just pretend that despite our runner-up finish, we really did deserve nothing better than the UEFA Cup. Then we can approach the offseason and the transfer market with eager excitement. We could imagine a team with KJH scoring goals, Steks making the saves, and MvB bringing in the type of players we need. But, it looks like this dream is on hold. Klaas-Jan Huntelaar, despite his strong hints that staying in Amsterdam was a strong possibility, has suddenly contracted a case of cold feet. A fear of commitment now plagues KJH’s thoughts, and he claims that he will make no decisions about his future until after the Euros.

As I hinted before, I say forget him. Now, I would love nothing more than to see Ajax’s most prolific striker since Zlatan wearing our shirt next year, but let’s be honest. From his comments to the press, he wants CL football more than he wants to fight for a club. I could write an entire post about how incredibly stupid that is for a player to chase the Champions League around like some Holy Grail. You could bounce from big club to big club for ten years and miss out every time. For every Clarence Seedorf there are dozens of players who miss out, gambling on a bigger club only to miss out. Did Henry expect to crash out in Barcelona? Did Pato expect to be in the UEFA Cup next year when he moved to Milan? CL glory is like lightning; it provides immense amounts of electricity, but you cannot predict it. If KJH wants to spend his career moving from place to place hoping to get lucky, good riddance. Scholes and Giggs have spent their careers at one “big club”, winning only one CL. If KJH had been playing at Ajax as long as Giggs and Scholes at ManU, he would have won as many CLs as they have.

So forgive me if I am already bored of the KJH drama. If he goes, he goes. Can we replace him? No. Will we be ruined? No. I am not going to spend my summer trolling for KJH rumors. There should be plenty of transfer activity that does not involve him. Here are a few bits already.

> After 32 minutes of the Samuel Kuffour era, the defender is being released. The very definition of a panic-purchase, Kuffour was either injured or irrelevant. Why did we even bother bringing him in? I dunno, but I bet Martin van Geel will leave the capture of Kuffour off his resume.

> FC Twente’s Brazilian defender Douglas has been linked to Ajax, but it is Douglas’ agent doing the talking. I can’t find anything from Ajax staffers so far. He looked great while putting handcuffs (footcuffs?) on KJH every time Ajax met Twente this season. He is 20. We need CBs. I would not mind this move, but I am also somewhat frustrated by this. Why did we let Twente beat us to such a prospect willing to move to Holland and able to excel there? Have our scouts stopped looking beyond the borders of Holland?

> No more word on the Sulejmani deal. If nothing happens this week, it will be clear that Ajax was just leverage in some agent’s quest to jack up the price of his client. Interest in this guy is there, but when an agent for a player coming off a knee injury gets so aggressive, I get concerned. The medical team had better look at this guy closely before we sign anything.

> Some KJH news not related to transfers has also come out. Evidently, KNVB chief official Jaap Uilenburg made a presentation to referees and their assistants before the match highlighting illegal elbowing by forwards using several pics of KJH as an example (like the one above). A few people are crying foul, especially since Uilenburg once worked for Twente. Who knows what really happened? Let’s complain enough to make sure no one is tempted to do this for real, but let’s not entertain the thought that the result should or could be overturned.

Category: Team News

Tags: Team News

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