Kind of feeling sorry for Ajax but this would be a major appointment. Hope there's some truth behind these rumours.
Edwin van der Sar has been approached to become Director of Football
- Thread starter Chairman Steve
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik @Rood and Imran @Annihilate Now! start with the good news by celebrating Manchester United Women's emphatic FA Cup win over Spurs at Wembley and the future of manager Marc Skinner.
Then it's the bad news and the ever worsening form of our Men with losses to Arsenal and Palace.
Finally the main debate - ETH Out now or keep him until the end of the season - if not longer. Are you Team Nik or Team Imran?
If it means bye bye Richard, that’s a bonus.
It'd be ironic if the first thing he does as DoF is get rid of Van De Beek. Then he can reuse his "take care of him" tweet from a few years ago.
I feel truly sorry for Ajax.
Edwin, come here and you will continue to be great!
Edwin, come here and you will continue to be great!
The issue being that Edwin specialty is supposed to be marketing and that at Ajax the day to day stuff is done by the DOF, Overmars. I could agree with you if we were talking about Aulas years ago who was for all intent and purposes doing both but as far as we know it's not the case at Ajax and never has been.
Vds was first appointed as head of marketing, but has been general manager since 2016. He worked very closely with Overmars, or more to the point Overmars reported directly to Vds. Vds has been part of the technical side of things since 2016. All working from the Cruijff mantra.
Really depends. If they are going to completely separate the business and football management of the business and essentially have VdS run the entire football operation, it would make sense. He would bring with him the football and business acumen to be a huge success in that role I’d think.
What I think is this: ETH and others at the club know him, and they have earmarked him for a specific role. That gives me some confidence that the appointment will make logical sense when we find out the details.
Which again doesn't make you a day to day DOF, he was leading the board which can be called a general manager but isn't a football managing role. Anyway the point is that, someone like VDS would be an unknown as an actual DOF. He has never done that job or anything close to it.
We might as well buy the whole club. Ajax must fecking hate us.
I’d just like to remind you we have been the greatest in Europe for the last 10 years at being incompetent at board level. So he will no doubt be an improvement.
Is this really our club that keeps making decent decisions? I'm not used to this.
I'm sure van der Sar is good at his job but Ajax have been a talent factory for decades. I suspect their success is driven by years of institutional experience and expertise spread through dozens of people.
It's one thing to take charge of a well oiled machine where everyone below you already knows what they're doing, but it's quite another to go and build a new machine almost from scratch as the chief decision-maker.
Assuming Murtough isn't suddenly leaving the club, I would have thought an actual recruitment expert to work under Murtough would be the profile we'd be looking to add. A profile Van Der Sar expressly doesn't fit. So I don't quite get what the thinking would be in terms of our structure if he was added to it.
Does he work under Murtough but above a proper recruitment lead we have yet to hire? Vice versa, with Murtough under Van Der Sar? Do we try to use one of Murtough/Van Der Sar to lead recruitment even though that's not really what either have done up to now? Does ETH just retain an unusually huge authority on recruitment? Does someone like Fletcher leave and VDS effectively replace him except in a differently defined role?
Does he work under Murtough but above a proper recruitment lead we have yet to hire? Vice versa, with Murtough under Van Der Sar? Do we try to use one of Murtough/Van Der Sar to lead recruitment even though that's not really what either have done up to now? Does ETH just retain an unusually huge authority on recruitment? Does someone like Fletcher leave and VDS effectively replace him except in a differently defined role?
Yes, please. Take the whole Ajax structure. 
Overmars? Just give him phones with no cameras attached. Otherwise, by all accounts, he was the technical genius behind Ajax's success.
We've gutted that club.
There's a lot to unpack and wonder who on behalf of United brought this up with VDS, because this could get messy if people aren't aligned, assuming this wasn't totally formal.
Arnold is the CEO of the football club. He's the top person. As of now, John Murtough is the football director which encompasses everything and anything related to football operations - academy, reserves, women's, men, etc. That is a lot and all that eventually goes through him from budgets, transfers, operations, etc. Darren Fletcher is a technical director that is a liason and bridge between youth mens players/teams and first team. He's not as heavily involved in major first team or overall football decisions, that majority responsibility is EtH and his coaching staff, plus Murtough and scouts etc.
If VDS is being considered as part of the football side at United, I think he'd slot in with John Murtough. Murtough oversees all football operations, but VDS could have majority day to day operations of all things first team football as they consider it, working with EtH.
That would free up Murtough's time to focus on women's team, youth recruitment, and get his global scouting and analytics teams full on board, since there's been major overhaul the past 8 months.
Arnold is the CEO of the football club. He's the top person. As of now, John Murtough is the football director which encompasses everything and anything related to football operations - academy, reserves, women's, men, etc. That is a lot and all that eventually goes through him from budgets, transfers, operations, etc. Darren Fletcher is a technical director that is a liason and bridge between youth mens players/teams and first team. He's not as heavily involved in major first team or overall football decisions, that majority responsibility is EtH and his coaching staff, plus Murtough and scouts etc.
If VDS is being considered as part of the football side at United, I think he'd slot in with John Murtough. Murtough oversees all football operations, but VDS could have majority day to day operations of all things first team football as they consider it, working with EtH.
That would free up Murtough's time to focus on women's team, youth recruitment, and get his global scouting and analytics teams full on board, since there's been major overhaul the past 8 months.
Haha would be the best option for both parties
I think VDS, if hired, will be slot between Arnold and Murtough. VDS will probably taking over the high level management side of Football Operation such as budget, planning and gerneral management. Murtought and Fletcher can focus on the more technical side of things such as recruitment, first team playing style and youth development.
The only poster here who thinks VDS is incompetent is also someone that blames United for Ronaldo’s situation so I wouldn’t take what they say seriously.
Do it
This thread is a great indicator as to just how clueless United supporters are when it comes to the all-powerful magical DOF. He isn’t even one of them for feck sake. Cop on.
Why?
And that's where you know this makes little sense. Van der Sar has not spent a minute of his post-player career doing DOF work. I know some people have been arguing in this thread that he might be doing similar work at Ajax as job functions aren't necessarily so specific; but Van der Sar actually studied sports management specifically to get into the business side of football. Overmars was Ajax's successful DOF, and now it's Klaas-Jan Huntelaar with Gerrit Hamstra.
If this is supposed to be real, the question isn't what Van der Sar actually does at Ajax, but what the Director of Football does at Manchester United. If it's really a football-oriented role, leading the scouting department etc., then this is definitely not suited to Van der Sar. But if it's more of a management role that's further removed from the football itself, then maybe - but I'd still think it doesn't sound like what Van der Sar has been working on in his own career.
Also, isn't Murtough United's DOF? What's he doing then?
Get him in. Excellent if we can nab him.
But how’s his DoF resume? That’s the role they mentioned, right? Or was it mis translated somewhere
Doesn't make sense to me. VDS is not Ajax's DoF, he's CEO and just signed a new contract.
Lots of people on here have been pointing that out, to be fair.
Let’s hope the ones who are getting giddy about VDS aren’t the same ones who (rightly) call the club out for giving former legends jobs on the strength of their “getting” the club rather than their suitability, qualifications or experience.
Do you not think many of his skills would be transferable, as is often the way in football?
Looking forward to 'What does VDS actually do' thread.
Jobs for the boys FC.
You don’t think VDS is suitable, qualified or experienced enough for the role?
Given he’s never done it before, of course he isn’t.
Please make this happen.
I'm starting to like this new Ajax franchise.
I think the criticism was that they never did that job anywhere prior to getting it at one of the biggest clubs in the world (Fletcher, Butt etc) or they managed at a relatively low level before being promoted to the biggest job (Ole). Edwin has left the nest, done his time and proven his worth at a perennial champions league club that routinely sells players for eye watering amounts. The qualifications in his case are quite different.
Shtop it!
Yes fecking please
That's not at all what he does at Ajax, so not sure he will actually be good at it? All I know from his work at Ajax is that he is an abysmall public speaker and comes across as a weak numpty.
(I do rate him as a keeper mind you).
(I do rate him as a keeper mind you).