A safe working and sports climate is missing from Ajax’s core values. That is what chairman Frank Eijken of the AFC Ajax association, with a 73 percent majority shareholder of the club, said in a letter to the 900 members on Monday. He is the first director involved with the club to speak out so emphatically, a week after the departure of director of football affairs Marc Overmars due to cross-border behavior towards several employees.
“We, the members of the association, are the guardians of the club culture and the DNA of which our core values are part,” writes Eijken. “A safe working and sports climate is part of this and if I’m honest that aspect is missing from our core values. Cultural change is not embedded in our DNA overnight. We will all have to work hard on this.”
‘Deeply shocked’
The association, which has five amateur teams and plays at De Toekomst training complex, is formally the holder of the KNVB license. Permission from the association is required, among other things, for changes to the name, logo, club colours, stadium location and youth academy. The most important organ of the association is the seven-member board of directors, which, as a major shareholder, is responsible for the appointment of supervisory directors at Ajax. Eijken is the chairman and can influence the policy at Ajax directly, through the shareholders’ meeting, and indirectly, in the informal circuit.
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He writes that the board is “deeply shocked” about the events at Ajax, they sympathize “with the women who felt unsafe at Ajax”.
The association will take the initiative to include the aspect ‘safe working and sports climate’ as the core value of the club. Eijken, in the letter to the members: “Whether you are a woman or man, what sexual preference you have, what religion you follow and what ethnicity you have, you are welcome at De Toekomst and you should always be able to feel safe. ”
The club’s six core values are now: ‘We want to be the best’, ‘We think offensively’, ‘We are Amsterdam direct’, ‘We bring talent to bloom’, ‘We strengthen each other’, ‘We show leadership’.
Eijken was in September in The Parool also critical of Ajax’s controversial training camp in Qatar.
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