With two notebooks full of notes as a souvenir of two instructive years as an assistant in England, John Heitinga (41) is back at Ajax. Sooner than he thought, he gets another chance as head coach in Amsterdam. “The feeling is immediately good.”
“Look, I see almost all the same faces as two years ago.” Heitinga looks around carefully in the temporary press room in Hotel Oud Londen in Zeist. About twenty journalists have come to his first press conference since his return as coach of Ajax.
Laughing: “I missed you. Although, I also liked it, two years in the quiet in England.”
It was a conscious choice to stay out of the media after his departure from Ajax in the spring of 2023. After being head coach on an interim basis for four months, as successor to the dismissed Alfred Schreuder, the club did not want to continue with him. “And that hurt.”
“I didn’t think it was chic to say anything about it at the time. I don’t want that, Ajax is my club. And even now I don’t want to look back. That’s wasted energy. I prefer to look ahead. Many of the people who were there then are no longer there.”
It was the long-departed technical director Sven Mislintat who, after a third place in the Eredivisie and a lost KNVB Cup final against PSV, decided not to continue with Heitinga as head coach. In the two years that followed, Ajax used three coaches.
Heitinga worked in England in the meantime. First as an assistant to David Moyes at West Ham United, then as Arne Slot’s right-hand man at the successful Liverpool.
“I was able to develop myself there tremendously,” he says. “To test where I was as a coach. And learn a lot. How do you deal with guys who have won everything there is to win? How do you convey a way of playing? And of course I was also able to see out of the corner of my eye how Arne did his press conferences.” Again with a laugh: “Can you tell?”
His wife Charlotte Sophie and his three children did not move to England with him. They stayed in Amsterdam, where son Lennox plays in Ajax’s youth academy.
The result was that Heitinga’s life in England was almost all about football. He talks about the lunches in London with Arsenal player Jurriën Timber. “Then I took a notebook with me and wanted to know everything about his trainer, Mikel Arteta’s, working methods. And about Jurriën’s move from Ajax to the Premier League. That was so educational for me as a young trainer.”
At Liverpool, Slot made Heitinga responsible for the analysis of the upcoming opponents in the Premier League. “Then I watched about five or six games back of Chelsea. How do they do against Bournemouth? What if they play with five defenders? I really enjoyed doing that. It was so cool.”
Heitinga has taken two full notebooks with him to Ajax. It is an instructive memento of great years, he says. Yet in recent months at Liverpool he felt that it was time for something else. He wanted to stand on his own two feet again.
His agent Rob Jansen advised him not to go back to Ajax. There were talks with several clubs. But when Ajax sounded out Heitinga in May, the choice for a return was quickly made.
“I immediately had the best feeling with Ajax. It was and is immediately good. Of course I discussed it at home at the kitchen table with my family. They were enthusiastic. I came home again.”
The return is no surprise to Heitinga. “When I left Ajax two years ago, the question was not: am I ever coming back? No, the question was: when am I coming back? I just didn’t expect it to happen so quickly.”
The goal is to become champion, which he already did as a player for the club in 2002 and 2004. At least, Heitinga wants it. “And wanting is different from having to,” he emphasizes. With a place in the top two (and therefore a direct ticket for the Champions League), the club management is also satisfied in his first season.
Under predecessor Francesco Farioli, Ajax almost won the title last season. Heitinga is complimentary about the Italian’s work. “There was a close-knit team. I liked seeing that unity.”
Furthermore, he doesn’t want to talk too much about Farioli. He only reveals that he will rotate less than his predecessor. And Ajax’s game will be more attacking.
“It will be controlled attacking. High pressure, creating many chances and scoring goals like that. That’s how I want to play and that suits Ajax very well. And it’s up to you, the journalists, to judge whether it works. I’m looking forward to it.”