West Ham United coach John Heitinga was a ‘victim’ of failed director of football Sven Mislintat at Ajax and should never have left the Dutch giants.
That’s according to former agent Rob Jansen, who believes Ajax did not deal with the situation with their former coach well and treated him badly.
Heitinga had been associated to Ajax for much of his playing and then coaching career, starting and ending the former at the club before moving into coaching with them.
He then started his coaching career with them too, joining as assistant manager in 2016 then acting as a manager at various levels of the youth set up before becoming caretaker manager of the first team in January last year.
He guided the club until the end of the season and managed 14 wins from 22 games in charge, as well as three draws and five defeats and a points per game tally of 2.05.
The belief had been that he would be handed the role full-time that summer as the club planned a rebuild but instead he sacked by new director of football Sven Mislintat, who had no intention of retaining his services.
He bounced back from that disappointment by taking up a coaching role with former manager David Moyes at West Ham, but Jansen believes that never should have happened.
“John, now second man at West Ham United, who are doing very well as a club, should have remained coach of Ajax,” he said.
“But due to the mess caused by our German friend Sven Mislintat, Ajax is still in misery for two/three years. He was a victim of that.
“Looking back, he should of course have just stayed. And this German gentleman should never have come. Everyone in the Netherlands now agrees on this. I predicted it, so to speak.”
