Jordi Cruijff is not alone: Ajax, responsibility, and the ghost of Mislintat

In Amsterdam there is a sound I have never heard anywhere else: the sound of a stool being dragged across a meeting room floor when a sporting director has just left his chair. Ajax fans are no stranger to that sound. They heard it when Marc Overmars left. They heard it again when Sven Mislintat had to leave the club after a series of controversial signings. And now, a similar sound is trying to echo around the name Jordi Cruijff. Het Parool recently reported that Jordi Cruijff, son of legendary Johan Cruijff, is running Ajax alone. The article painted the picture of a technical director with too much power, deciding transfers alone and building the squad alone. For those who witnessed the Mislintat era, that detail immediately evoked a familiar fear. They remember the summer of 2026, when a German executive spent millions on unsuitable contracts, leaving Ajax groping in the dark. Menno Geelen – general director of Ajax – does not accept that framing. In an interview with De Telegraaf, he said plainly: “I do not recognise that portrayal at all. Jordi is very much a team player. I have personally spoken to him virtually every day over the past few months, about all sorts of matters.” Geelen insists Cruijff regularly consults other Ajax board members. He mentions finance director Shashi Baboeram Panday and developing technical managers Daniel de Ridder and Siem de Jong. Cruijff also exchanges views with the coach, other members of the staff, and the football commissioner. Based on my experience following Ajax matches and transfer windows since the 1990s, I recognise that Geelen’s answer is not merely a denial of a newspaper article. It is a statement about organisation. Cruijff no longer works like a lone predator. He sits inside a network with controls. But I am old enough to know that claims made in boardrooms only matter when measured over time. Fans do not ask who is in charge alone; they ask whether the team wins or loses. When I watched Ajax while Cruijff began bringing in players, I felt a clear difference compared to the Mislintat era. Sven Mislintat was a talented scout placed in a club where the football axis did not function. He had much power, little control, and almost no strong technical department to challenge him. The result was a series of expensive but lifeless deals. Geelen admits that: “The Mislintat period was evaluated extensively, including externally. One of the findings was that the football axis within the organisation was not in order. That has been addressed. The entire transfer process was also reviewed and improved.” In Dutch football, people remember the goal, but I write about the one who gave that goal to life through a mistaken touch. Mislintat is not the only culprit; his mistaken touch was only the visible part of an organisation lacking a football axis. When a club has no connection between scouting, technical staff and finance, every signing becomes a gamble. Some win, some lose, but the structure stays still. What Ajax did after the Mislintat era is not just replacing a director. They are trying to change the way the organisation makes decisions. There is a paradox in Geelen’s own story. If Jordi truly exchanges views with many people ‘almost every day’, why could Het Parool’s article still create the opposite impression? Because one of Ajax’s diseases is not located in any individual, but in a culture of silence behind glass walls. When every decision is made in closed meeting rooms, outsiders only see handshakes and signing papers. They do not see the phone calls, they do not see the debates. So the question ‘who is in charge?’ keeps returning. But there is one detail I consider most valuable in the De Telegraaf interview. Geelen said that even though he was only commercial director during the Mislintat period, he still felt responsible. In a club where directors usually take credit when winning and pass the blame when losing, it is rare for a general director to accept responsibility for a period he did not manage. It shows Ajax is trying to change the culture of blame, and it also shows they understand Mislintat was only a symptom. Comparing Jordi Cruijff with Mislintat is understandable. Both have power in transfers, both brought in many players, and both are scrutinised under the media microscope. But the difference lies in the infrastructure around them. Cruijff is placed within a system with many participants, with cross-checks and a process that has been re-evaluated. Mislintat, on the contrary, was left alone with great power and few people to challenge him. Ajax’s story therefore is not a story about one person, but a story about how a collective operates. I do not know whether Jordi Cruijff will succeed. I do not know whether next season’s signings will explode or sink. But I have learned one thing from following high-level football: great clubs are not built by one person, but by structures strong enough to tolerate the smallness of every individual. Ajax still has much work to do, but they have given one correct answer. I chase transfer news like chasing an open ending: knowing this could be a farewell, but never knowing the ending. For Cruijff, any signing could be just an unfinished story. But for Ajax, the most unfinished story is the obsession with a shadow named Mislintat. They may not need a hero. They need a collective transparent enough so that no one is misunderstood as ‘working alone’.