Yards away from the main entrance to the north stand at the Johan Cruyff Arena is a canal and clinging onto the banks of the water is a football pitch.
Cruyff died in 2016 but he remains a guide for each player that represents the club, as well as every employee. A huge banner of him in an Ajax shirt is attached to one of the stadium’s vast concrete tablets and this means his eyes overlook the grass, like an eternal warden of the true faith.
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On Wednesday night, Ajax were 90 minutes away from hosting Vitesse in the cup but the mood was unusual.
For only the second time in months, the team would perform in front of a limited number of spectators owing to lockdown restrictions. Outside, groups of men were drinking lager, sellers were flogging trinkets from their stands and the engines of food trucks were humming.
Just beyond that scene, one of the club’s junior sides trained. Divided into four groups, 20 or so hypnotically-skilled girls practised with the sort of intensity and focus that makes you think at least one of them will fulfil their dream.
The Ajax system was well and truly running. You would not know that one of its vital parts was missing — the part whose responsibilities covered this sector of the club.
Vitesse was the first game since Marc Overmars announced his resignation as director of football.
The former Ajax, Arsenal and Barcelona winger has been credited as the architect behind Ajax’s push into the latter stages of major European competitions between 2016 and 2019. Yet on Sunday night, his sudden departure was driven by scandal after the club announced he had sent “a series of inappropriate messages to several female colleagues over an extended period”.
On Monday morning, the Dutch newspaper NRC revealed it had been investigating abuses of power at Ajax since December after receiving a tip-off about Overmars’ behaviour.
It released its findings later on Monday in a devastating report, which begins inside the office toilets at Ajax. A woman, who says she received one of Overmars’ unsolicited messages, realised he was at work because of the tiling on the walls.
NRC claimed it was not the first or the last “dick pic” Overmars sent to the woman, one of 11 former employees whose anonymity is protected by the paper because of fear of possible consequences in their jobs.
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These testimonies and evidence would surely have brought down one of the most powerful men in Dutch football had the club not acted before publication.
The Athletic has learned that Ajax contacted NRC a week earlier, after learning of the newspaper’s investigation — although, at that time, Overmars’ name was not mentioned in any correspondence.
Inside six days, he was gone.
Ajax have since received ferocious criticism for not sacking him. The timing of the announcement has also invited questions about the club’s motivations. Was anyone else in a senior position aware of his behaviour and, if so, what did they do about it? Did the club only act when it became clear a damning report was looming?
NRC reported that on January 25, Edwin van der Sar, the Ajax general manager, wrote to all employees reminding them of the club’s complaints and whistleblower procedure. This came after another front-page sex scandal in the Netherlands, after which chiefs at the Voice of Holland TV programme lost their jobs.
Three days after Van der Sar’s email, Overmars signed a new contract at Ajax until 2026. His “transgressive” behaviour predates that agreement, according to NRC, which established a picture of a “cock culture” in which “sexual misconduct can thrive”.
NRC reported that one woman received a message from a player, who suggested they meet in a toilet cubicle. When another woman was photographed by a male colleague without her permission, nothing happened. If attempts at documenting these events were made, the women were not listened to. They felt like they had to go along with this culture or risk losing their jobs.
Overmars was presented as a loner who would sidle over to female colleagues with a coffee cup in his hand. Initially, he’d ask them if he could help with anything. Sometimes, conversations would go on unnecessarily long. Overmars might be a smart deal-breaker in the transfer market but he has never been a smooth communicator. He preferred texting. “After a small opening — an apparently harmless answer — he became unrelenting,” NRC wrote. “The way he made contact became more and more obtrusive. He didn’t hesitate to send pictures of his genitals.”
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The women did not know how to respond to him but his reputation was spreading. Overmars had a nickname. “Geilneef” is a swear word in Dutch for a man who displays sexually obtrusive behaviour. A sort of “horny cousin”, as one native speaker says.
When asked about all of these allegations by The Athletic, Ajax refused to comment. Meanwhile, Overmars has ignored attempts to contact him. Beyond the statement published on Ajax’s website, nobody but the first team’s manager Erik ten Hag has yet spoken publicly about the scandal.
Ten Hag, linked heavily with taking over at Manchester United, had been one of Overmars’ closest allies and although he received praise in the Netherlands for the sensitive way in which he respected the experiences of the victims, the bar is very low when it comes to offering good statements on the subject.
Ten Hag also said he did not “know all the facts” and avoided a question about cultural problems at Ajax before helping steer the team to a 5-0 victory over Vitesse.
Before that game, most people outside the stadium didn’t want to talk about the developments at the club they support. Understandably, nearly everyone who was asked for their views seemed uncomfortable. Overmars’ actions have the potential to lead to a criminal investigation if complaints are made by any of the victims.
There was hostility, too, particularly among groups of men, some of whom admitted they had not read the full report in the NRC “because we don’t trust media” but were otherwise adamant Overmars had done little wrong — even though he had resigned — “because it is what happens in every office”.
Overmars’ job covered the development of the club’s women’s ranks. The ABN AMRO bank, sponsors of the women’s first team, was one of several considering its future with Ajax this week. As one of the parents of the training children said, it would be the girls’ and women’s teams that would be most affected if that deal was terminated. “It is very unfair,” a mum said quietly, as her daughter trained. “I will think more about safeguarding after what has happened.”
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In another part of Amsterdam, Van der Sar spent Wednesday trying to reassure the club’s business partners. Although the criticism Ajax have received for burying the news of Overmars’ departure so late into the night (beyond the print deadlines of newspapers, thus avoiding negative headlines) is fair, it is also relevant that the club sits on the stock exchange. The Athletic understands one of the reasons Ajax waited until almost midnight on Sunday related to share-price concerns and how the news would affect the market. By the following morning, it had plunged by almost five per cent.
As a listed company, Ajax are wary of taking communicative risks. But by saying nothing, Van der Sar’s credentials as a leader have taken a beating. While inviting questions about his own knowledge of Overmars’ conduct, it looks like he and therefore the club cares more about money than what is right.
Before reaching a decision about Overmars, the club took advice from a PR firm about how to deal with the situation. It has also been suggested Ajax have breached licensing agreements with the Dutch FA (KNVB) by not following protocols in relation to procedure around workplace safety grievances, but The Athletic has been told by sources inside the organisation that it is satisfied by the evidence the club has since supplied.
There is no clause in KNVB legislation that states Overmars should have been sacked for his actions. While an independent investigation launched by the KNVB but conducted independently continues, Overmars cannot be employed in the Netherlands now that he is out of work. Once a decision has been taken and he has served any punishment, there is nothing aside from public opinion or a potential criminal investigation to stop him from returning to the game.
A couple of years ago, Tamara was working in an Amsterdam cafe as a duty manager on two or three shifts a week. There was another manager who seemed to work every living hour — a friend of the cafe’s owner. They became friends, Tamara thinks, because the owner saw he was willing to do long hours for poor pay. This meant he essentially ran the place.
Staff complained about his behaviour. He would swear at colleagues and make them feel miserable about themselves. This manifested into something else. Female staff wore V-neck t-shirts and the manager would stare down them, making lewd comments. Although the owner said he would deal with the manager, nothing changed. Despite more complaints, he was always there at the start of every working day.
Tamara used to tell the manager exactly what she thought of him. She was verbally abused but she was never subjected to his sexual advances. The atmosphere was toxic. With a lack of intervention, it worried her where everything was leading. This prompted her to leave her job and, for a short while, have less money to live on as a student.
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She was preparing to go to bed last Sunday night when a news bulletin flashed up on her phone. Overmars, the sporting director of Ajax — the team she supports because of her dad — had resigned from his position. That night, she barely slept. Not because Overmars had gone but because he was allowed to make the decision himself. She could not believe it.
Thoughts rattled around in the back of her head about her own past. If Ajax, the biggest club in the Netherlands, allow one of the most important people at the club to walk away of his own accord because of sexual impropriety, what chance do women everywhere else really have?
She read the statement, over and over again. Just five paragraphs.
“Director of football affairs Marc Overmars will leave Ajax with immediate effect,” it said. “He made this decision after discussions in recent days with the supervisory board and CEO Edwin van der Sar and communicated his intentions to them. A series of inappropriate messages sent to several female colleagues over an extended period of time underlies his decision to leave the club.”
A quote from Overmars followed. “I am ashamed,” he said. “Last week, I was confronted with reports about my behaviour.” The brief apology that followed felt like it was directed more at fans than any of the women he had pursued at the club.
“The statement was terrible,” Tamara says when she meets The Athletic in Amsterdam two days later. “What they wrote was very selfish.”
Selfish, because of the platitudes in the statement. The supervisory board’s chairman Leen Meijaard suggested Overmars was “probably the best football director Ajax has had”. Van der Sar, meanwhile, said, “This news will be a blow to everyone who cares about Ajax.”
“It does not matter what he (Overmars) has achieved in light of the allegations,” Tamara says. Although Meijaard and Van der Sar mentioned the victims, it felt like the club was giving the impact of Overmars’ sudden departure equal status. “It said to me: they are losing someone very special because of this.”
Everything about the way Ajax have handled Overmars’ departure disgusts her. “Some people — nearly all men — have credited Ajax for reporting this,” she says. “But they are actually too late.”
Tamara likes going to matches because it makes her feel a part of “something”. For now, however, “I don’t want to be a part of this — I’m glad I did not buy any tickets (for the game against Vitesse). I don’t want to go. You hope the companies and the clubs that you are a fan of don’t do bad things, and then you read this…”
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If it transpires Overmars was acting alone and nobody else at the club other than the victims knew about it, then she might return. Yet she thinks that possibility is unlikely because Overmars, according to the NRC report, has earned himself a nickname. “Nicknames only happen because of reputations. And you don’t get a reputation without doing something more than once and people knowing about it,” she says.
“A year from now, it will be forgotten but I don’t think it should be. It depends on how far this goes. For now, it looks like it’s only really about Overmars. But if there are people in the company who knew about it and did nothing then that is a bigger issue.”
Tamara sometimes watches matches with her friends in the cafes of Amsterdam but even that prospect of that feels wrong. “It’s the same as the victims of famous actors and directors in Hollywood who have been exposed for sexual crimes. I cannot watch their movies, even if I once liked them.”
Cafe conversation worries her. “I see the reaction on Twitter from men and I don’t like it. I don’t want to put myself in a situation where I hear people talking about it in a dismissive way. I would feel uncomfortable but I’d want to say something about it. But then also, I don’t know whether it would be safe for me to say something.”
In the Netherlands, a clearer protocol for victims of sexual offences was outlined in 2019. This has led to questions being posed — again, mainly by men — about why Overmars’ victims chose to tell their story to the media anonymously.
It says much about the fear of women in the masculine culture of football that Tamara is only comfortable with The Athletic publishing her first name. “If women choose to go to the papers rather than their boss or through official work channels, it says plenty about the environment that exists,” she says.
Amsterdam’s city council is aware and wants to “support sports clubs in identifying and reporting any form of undesirable behaviour”.
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“Everyone in our city should be able to exercise safely and work at a sports club,” deputy mayor Simone Kukenheim told The Athletic, suggesting the “shocking events at Ajax” have triggered “attention” among the rest of the city’s 1,300 sports providers. “Behaviour that crosses the other person’s boundaries in any way is unacceptable,” she said. “I am shocked and take this very seriously.”
For Tamara, Ajax has always been the best place to learn about life — not just football. For her, the club represents “growth and opportunity — there’s a lot of young people who make it at Ajax then go on to do something else in another country.” “The education players get is amazing,” she says. “But that perception has shifted now because they haven’t done it right. If the club sets the wrong example, how are young players supposed to believe what they are told? Some people say they did a good thing by sacking him but they didn’t really do that… they let him leave. These people, they don’t want to see their dreams shattered.”
In January, one of Overmars’ last signings was Mohamed Ihattaren on loan from Juventus, a prodigious teenage midfielder who was booted out of PSV Eindhoven because of ill-discipline.
“The first thing everybody said when he came back from Italy was he couldn’t behave like he did at PSV any more. There are rules and he has to abide by them. Who and what is he supposed to believe now? Apparently, Ajax doesn’t know what some of the rules are anymore. At least, Overmars doesn’t — we don’t know yet how far all of this goes.”
Tamara says she would like to see more transparency from the club. That would involve a full explanation, detailing a timeline that shows what has happened and who knew what and when.
“Don’t pretend you don’t know about this. Though I didn’t find him very interesting, it was clear Overmars did good things for the club on the sporting side. But the system should not protect him. Now, I see him as a sad little man.”
Like Tamara, Zina would like to protect her identity, and this is her working name. She grew up close to De Wallen, Amsterdam’s red-light district. Fed up with a desk role in research, five years ago she became a sex worker after finding new friends who were in the sector. The choice did not seem like a big deal. “They all seemed to enjoy their job,” she tells The Athletic. “The bridge did not feel so wide anymore.”
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Unlike Tamara, Zina feels like she has more control over her working relationships.
“So much workplace harassment is seen as acceptable,” she says. “If you are a waitress and men make crude comments to you, you are supposed to smile. That is because of the culture of tips.
“Then, in offices, the same crude comments happen. Maybe you get pinched on the ass but in most cases, you have to put up with it because if you complain, your career might suffer. Sometimes, the only option is to leave but that seems so unfair…
“With this work, sex does not mean I have to put up with being pinched on the ass — even though someone might say I’m being paid for it. The boundaries are much clearer. At the start of the conversation, I can say, ‘You can touch me here, here and here but if you go there, you are out of the door’.”
The narrow streets that run around the city’s docks are the most famous in Amsterdam. Liberal attitudes in the Netherlands towards sex and soft drugs are known across the world. When tourists visit, many of them have already decided where they want to explore. As Zina suggests, “Nowhere else on the planet is like De Wallen.”
Over the last 20 years, however, the mood has changed, with the area and its surroundings becoming more like a theme park for stag dos and occasionally, football crowds. When Ajax hosted Chelsea in 2019, the local authorities issued a ban on alcohol. A year earlier, there was even more trouble when England fans piled into town for an international friendly.
Not everyone who enters De Wallen pays for sex. But they do come for the sights. Overcrowding, especially across long summer weekends and before big football matches, sometimes creates an uncomfortable atmosphere for residents. Locally, Dutch tolerance is waning, and this had led to the city’s left-leaning female mayor Femke Halsema considering a radical relocation plan that would see the red-light district move to another part of the city, possibly outside of it altogether.
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Zina sees excuses and other motivations. “There are big gentrification efforts,” she says. “The mayor thinks the area needs cleaning up. The reason given is tourism. They say it makes the neighbourhood unlivable for the inhabitants because of the noise and garbage. This would make the lives of sex workers even more complicated.
“It feels very much like we are being pushed away. They will turn off the red light and close the window. In place, there will be another ice cream or waffle shop, because the tourists will keep coming just the same. It’s typical that sex workers are being blamed for a problem caused by the city’s negligence in regulating tourism.”
Sex work gives employment to plenty of men in Amsterdam but women form the overwhelming majority. Zina says it did not surprise her when she heard about developments, just over five miles away, in the offices of Ajax on Monday morning.
Sex workers, she says, feel like they are being squeezed out from a space they have held for so long because of the decisions of authority figures who misunderstand the industry.
“This means people in power now know they can affect how women choose to live their lives and what they do with their bodies,” Zina says. “There is some relationship between what has happened at Ajax and what is happening here. I generally feel quite safe in my work. The unsafety I feel comes from laws and restrictions. Supposedly, the regulations are meant to protect me but the effect of it means I am less protected.”
Listening to Zina at the Prostitution Information Centre, located in the shadow of the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam’s oldest building, it is very clear that something is not right in the world she knows so well — a world, she stresses, that “has been a part of everyone’s world in this country since the Middle Ages”.
Zina says it is inevitable that if the red-light district is treated differently to what it once was, then attitudes towards sex and towards women beyond its boundaries are likely to change as well. “Because most people associate sex work with women, it says to people that women are too vulnerable to make good decisions about themselves.”
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“In any country where sex work is decriminalised, there is less of a stigma,” she continues. “And stigma is what makes the sex work unsafe. With stigma, you have dehumanisation. And that increases the chance of the client being disrespectful or violent. It is not something you can solve by having very restrictive laws. Restrictive laws say to people that sex work isn’t a real job. It says it is a criminal activity that the authorities need to keep close tabs on. And this makes the stigma even worse. For all women, it becomes worse…”
When the news broke about Overmars, Zina says she shrugged her shoulders. This wasn’t because she doesn’t care. If Amsterdam’s sex workers are being failed and marginalised because of decisions made by authority, then it surely increases the possibility of other well-established authority figures in the city thinking it’s OK to treat female workers or other marginalised groups in such a way.
“For me, there was no surprise,” Zina admits. “If you are paying close attention to what is happening, the treatment is inevitable.”
(Graphic: Tom Slator)
