Louis van Gaal is to take over as general manager at Ajax football club. ‘Saviour’ Johan Cruijff , whose second coming at the club last year was to make it great once more but whose ‘dictatorial style’ caused a simmering resentment instead, called the unexpected move ‘bonkers’. What the papers say.

The AD lets the fans decide if Cruijff’s analysis of the situation is correct. The paper conducted a poll among 13,000 fans which showed a majority support Cruijff.
‘Johan, we’re behind you!’
‘67% think supervisory board chairman Steven Ten Have should go while 33% support the decision to take on Van Gaal’, the paper writes.
The fans speculate that Van Gaal will ‘get his own back’ on Cruijff with whom he is not on good terms. Others see Van Gaal as a competent trainer but not as management material. One supporter called on other Ajax fans to make their preference clear during next Saturday’s game against Breda. ‘Johan, we’re behind you all the way!’, he is quoted as saying.
Ruthless
The same paper quotes former international Tscheu La Ling, Cruijff’s choice after Cruijff vetoed Marco van Basten: ‘It’s not about me. Van Gaal and Danny Blind would be able to do the job just as well but the way this was done is disgraceful. It’s a coup, plain and simple. That is not the way to treat a club icon. These people are ruthless; they would sell their own grandmothers just to be able to stay where they are’.
Van Gaal’s former business manager Rob Cohen agrees: ‘It’s not like Louis to be so underhand’, he is quoted as saying. In 2010 Van Gaal famously said he would not return to Ajax as long as Cruijff was there.
In the Volkskrant columnist Bert Wagendorp has a fair idea of how it all happened.
Tackled to the ground
‘You can just see them, the plotters. They are going to knock the king off his throne. It’s dangerous, de Telegraaf will scream for their heads. But it has to be done. And they need the support of the one man on the board who has brought in the prizes. Anyone else will be thrown to the lions.
‘I’m going to give him (Van Gaal ed.) a ring’, board member Edgar Davids finally says. They fall into each others arms, crying.’
Wagendorp thinks this is the end of the ‘Cruijff era’. ‘He could have one last magisterial move in mind. But I think the maestro has been tackled to the ground.’
Former Ajax general manager Maarten Oldenhof is quoted in the Telegraaf as saying ‘Funny how, Ten Have, a professor in change management ends up with the old conflict model’, the paper writes.
‘Work together? Never’
The paper also conducted a poll. ’61% of the 21,000 people who responded think Cruijff and Van Gaal should bury their differences and work together.’
Het Parool asked former Ajax player Sjaak Swart (‘Mister Ajax’) if he thought Cruijff and Van Gaal could work together. ‘Never’, an irritated Swart said.