"The plan is tempting, but it's hard to say how much of it can actually be carried out."
This was Yang Yang's assessment of the meeting after he had finished meeting Ajax's management and seen them off at the hotel. Raiola and Guido Albers, who had been waiting at the hotel, then came to his room to visit him.
He had never been someone who easily trusted others, so his attitude was one of observation.
Starting from this attitude, he understood even more clearly that, if he wanted to keep Ajax's transformation within the scope of his influence as much as possible, he would need sufficient support from both the Supervisory Board and the club's management.
"Tomorrow, I'll stay in the Netherlands for one more day. I'd like to meet privately with Van der Sar, Overmars, Menno Geelen, and the others." Yang Yang thought it over and decided that he still needed to communicate further with Van der Sar and the others.
It wasn't only because Van der Sar would become the team's general manager a year later, but also because he was a member of the Technical Heart Group.
As a player who had come through Ajax, Yang Yang knew very well how important the Technical Heart Group was to Ajax.
Back when Van Gaal was in charge of Ajax and serving as Technical Director, he had wanted to launch a round of reforms. But after he stepped down, the reforms came to nothing, and Ajax eventually ended up in its current state.
But Van der Sar had been absolutely right about one thing: excellent youth development was part of Ajax's DNA, already woven into the team's very bloodline. The Technical Heart Group had tremendous influence over Ajax's youth development, and since it consisted of Club Legends such as