Ambitious Heitinga leaves the path of gradualism to help Ajax out

John Heitinga will make his debut on Sunday against Excelsior (kick-off at 2.30 pm) as head coach of Ajax in the Eredivisie. The general public mainly knows him as a defender with a good kick from Ajax and Orange, as a trainer he only just comes into play. A profile of an ambitious, but inexperienced trainer.

On Friday afternoon, just after three o’clock, Ajax announced that the training after the dismissal of head coach Alfred Schreuder had been led by Heitinga, coach of Jong Ajax. Two hours later, the message was already updated: Heitinga is also responsible for the next Eredivisie match, with Excelsior.

Perhaps Ajax was still busy with other candidates in those intervening hours, but those negotiations had broken down. Or maybe Heitinga himself still had to be convinced. The latter seems quite plausible. Heitinga said in the summer that he is not in a hurry with his trainer career.

Last season, as a trainer of Jong Ajax, Heitinga very consciously chose the path of gradualism. He thought he could best develop himself in the relative lee. Of course it was his ambition to make the step to the premier league, but everything in its time.

“I am 38, this season I am head coach of Jong Ajax in the first division for the first time. I enjoy working with the staff and the players. At the moment I am in a great position as a young coach, in which you can also can and may make mistakes,” he told NOS at the end of 2021.

But just over a year later, Ajax made an urgent appeal to Heitinga due to the inevitable dismissal of Schreuder. The club had already asked him a few days before to replace Matthias Kaltenbach, Schreuder’s criticized German right-hand man, but Heitinga will even be the most important man in the technical staff in the coming period.

The 87-time international stopped playing football seven years ago at the age of 32. He had returned to old love Ajax, but his comeback did not turn out as hoped. Instead of a dream farewell with a championship plate, he decided to end his playing career before the season was over.

In the time that followed, Heitinga, like many former football players, was searching: what now?

But when he got the chance to smell the coaching profession in Ajax’s youth academy in 2017, Heitinga didn’t have to think long. He then quickly joined Jong Ajax as an assistant to Marcel Keizer and worked there with exceptional talents such as Matthijs de Ligt and Frenkie de Jong, but also with current selection players Devyne Rensch, Jurriën Timber, Brian Brobbey and Kenneth Taylor.

“In those years I quickly found out that I really liked the coaching profession,” said Heitinga at the end of 2021. And so he obtained all his diplomas at UEFA, from TC1 to Pro License. With Kevin Hofland, Rogier Meijer and Rick Kruys, among others, Heitinga passed the most important trainer course in the class of 2019. And he was authorized to work independently as head coach in national and international professional football.

Heitinga got the chance to become head coach of Jong Ajax last season. At that time, he participated in the TV show The perfect picture, in which he turned out to have a great talent for photography. But talent or not, his ambition as a coach took precedence and so the clear favorite for the victory disappeared from the program.

With the promises of Ajax, currently number 15 in the first division, Heitinga was mainly concerned with preparing talents for the first team. He is praised by his players for his personal approach. He believes that the more you know about the players, the more you can get out of them.

Heitinga copied that lesson from Louis van Gaal. But he also thinks highly of Co Adriaanse, who made his debut at Ajax. Trainers who consider the discipline important and propagate the Ajax philosophy, he wants to identify himself with that.

Former top coach Guus Hiddink mentioned Ruud van Nistelrooij and Heitinga more than a year ago in the same breath as up-and-coming trainer talents. Strengths according to Hiddink: both are obsessed with the profession, extremely eager to learn and they opted for the sensible, gradual path. But nothing as opportunistic as the football world, because a year and a half later, one is head coach of PSV and the other (interim) head coach of Ajax.

At 39, Heitinga is younger than goalkeeper Maarten Stekelenburg and the same age as Remko Pasveer. And so the question arises whether he is the right man at the moment to help the errant Ajax on top. Ajax’s club management has not yet decided whether Heitinga will finish the season at Ajax or whether it will stick to a few games.

One thing is certain: he does not have to get used to the culture of the club, where he started as a seven-year-old boy, made his debut ten years later, ended his playing career, was allowed to smell the coaching profession and is now taking his first steps as head coach of the first.