Antony: Why Ajax are furious with Man Utd
FT Desk
- 7 Sept 2022 07:30 BST
- 3 min read
Ajax got €100 million for Brazil winger Antony. Manchester United got a player who scored on his debut against Arsenal. Everyone's a winner, right?
Ajax made €165.5m out of Man Utd all told this summer, with Lisandro Martinez beating Antony to Old Trafford by a matter of weeks.
But Ajax had already sold star striker Sebastien Haller to Borussia Dortmund and Netherlands midfielder Ryan Gravenberch to Bayern Munich, and the squad that reached last season's Champions League last 16 felt decimated.
Antony is just trolling the Premier League 💀pic.twitter.com/2FjBWI0Ryc
— Football Transfers (@Transfersdotcom) September 6, 2022
"Manchester United's timing was so bad," Ajax sporting director Gerry Hamstra told Dutch daily De Telegraaf.
"The last few days [of the transfer window] became even more hectic after Ajax had already gone through a major rebuild of the squad following the departure of lots of top-class players.
Ajax left with a void
"It was so difficult to leave our manager with such a void. We all think we lost too many first-team players who always start. We had a summer with totally different expectations."
Ajax reinvested more than €100m of what they made on the likes of Tottenham Hotspur winger Steven Bergwijn and Rangers defender Calvin Bassey, while Brian Brobbey returned to the club from RB Leipzig. But Hamstra would rather have had Antony than excess funds.
"We wanted to keep the group together as much as possible to be able to perform well in the Champions League and to carry on being successful," he said.
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"That's what we talked about with [new manager] Alfred [Schreuder]. Of course, we knew there were a few snags. But no one had foreseen that our players would be bought for such huge sums of money.
"I understand Schreuder's anger, very much so. I've been a manager myself, so I know how annoying it is when your best player leaves at the very last minute.
"We didn't want this, we wanted to keep Antony."
