If Mendez was anywhere close to as good as Blind, that would be incredible. Unuvar/Hansen now playing for JA at the wings over Mendez. He's just not good enough to play for Ajax. Hopefully 20/21 he plays somewhere he has a chance.
It shouldn’t be a surprise he’s not doing much for Jong Ajax. He’s one of the most over hyped players from the youth national team in a while. He’s got a tremendous left foot. What else?
On for the second half, subbing in for the goal-scorer Brobbey ... Interesting, I see two midfielders subbing on for two strikers (Mendez for Brobbey; Unuvar for Hansen). Edit: now 2-0 Ajax, Unuvar with the 2nd @ 76'
Jong Ajax is back in action tomorrow (Wed Jan 8), a friendly v Livingston (of Scotland). "The {Livingston} Lions will also face Dutch Eerste Divisie side Ajax Jong. This game will take place at the hotel resort on 8th January 2020 with a 3 pm kick-off." "We {Livingston} plan on bringing you regular updates from our time over in Spain and will also be providing live updates of the games via our twitter feed." La Manga Football Centre https://livingstonfc.co.uk/winter-training-camp/
I gather no one else is following this one. On the plus side, my tracker has Mendez playing in the middle of a 4-3-3, with Ajax ahead 3-1 @ 72'. On the minus side, I only recognize one other name in the eleven, Boy Kemper (in central defense). This makes we wonder if many of the Jong Ajax players are with not-Jong Ajax - scheduled to play tomorrow (now v Eupen, not Galatasaray). Edit: Finished Jong Ajax 3-1 Livingston. Adding to the plus side, from what I can tell, Mendez played the full 90'. Don't know who the goal-scorers were.
Yeah lots of talents are in Qatar with the regular Ajax: Juan Castillo Jurriën Timber Kenneth Taylor Sontje Hansen Naci Ünüvar Quinten Timber Danilo Pereira Da Silva Another sign Ajax don't rate Mendez. All of those guys are younger and not on the senior roster (there are shuttle players like, Eiting, Gravenberch, Pierie who are there too).
id imagine alex basically has the rest of this season to 'break out' at jong ajax before they bring in another prospect like him this summer? even if he does they probably will. am i right in thinking he is under tremendous pressure now?
He signed a 3-year deal, right? Ajax are on the hook for that. Yes, there will always be competition and Ajax is not going to give opportunities that are not earned. But the club has a big investment in Alex and a big incentive to develop him as much as possible, if only to get a transfer fee that recoups their investment.
I have no clue why people keep thinking this is a huge investment from Ajax. The transfer fee was probably nothing. 3-year deal can probably be broken quite easily (with no fee) if he wants to go somewhere else. Ajax could care less about a tiny transfer fee -- probably wouldn't be more than 200,000 Euro at this point. They let similar level guys move for basically nothing all of the time. It's in their best interest to not hold young players hostage and let them go if they aren't good enough.
They bring in multiple guys like him every year (plus have tons of youth talents who will probably replace him in the spring). IF he's not good enough, they'll loan him or just let him go free/extremely cheap. I wouldn't say he's under tremendous pressure. He challenged himself at a big club and it's clear he isn't good enough to play for Ajax. The only pressure I would say is what is his next move. He needs to start playing first team football somewhere. So I'm interested where he will go.
If I’m Mendez, I might push for one more year at Jong Ajax. If it doesn’t work then, I’d come back to the Galaxy.
It all depends on how well he does during the 2nd half. He has lagged behind Gio, Uly, and Ledezma in terms of playing time and success: Name (% starting 11, % minutes) Gio (79, 74) Uly (71, 64) Richie (85, 86) Alex (30, 27) Gio has a 23% goal participation stat and Uly has 10 goals and 3 assists despite missing roughly a month to injury. Even though Richie's goal participation is only 13% the fact that he is getting that many minutes speaks volumes. I know Jong AJAX has a lot of talent... but if he can't get more minutes during the 2nd half of the season he may want to move on. He will be 20 this year and could have been a valuable part of the Galaxy this season.
Waste of time. The writing is on the wall at Ajax. It’s not gonna happen for him there. I don’t think he stands to gain much becoming more and more irrelevant on the Jong team until he eventually leaves at the end of 20/21. He should leave asap. Definitely this summer.
i think thats why i said he was down to months to turn things around. if he doesnt come out like gangbusters and force ajax to reassess him in the next month or two i think its time to move too
That’s a big IF, when he’s guaranteed the senior non-EU minimums is 3rd year. they’re Dutch, they sure as hell care about a million dollar investment. They may have the business sense to know some signings don’t work out, but you try to maximize benefit. And for a 3 season commitment that means more than 8 months of intensive training.
All options require a solution Alex wants. For the next 2 seasons he is guaranteed, what, at least €500k total as a non EU player crossing the age threshold?
Yea, I don't know if I'd advise Mendez to take a deal elsewhere that would pay him substantially less then the high salary he is earning at Ajax. If he takes a big cut to come back to MLS or something similar he may never get close to that salary level again. If used intelligently the salary he is getting at Ajax can be life changing money. Two years of salary at 400,000 euros... after taxes and living expenses... maybe he can save 200,000 euros a year x 2 years = $445,000.... stick that in some index funds returning 6% over the course of 30 years (Mendez is 50) that will turn into $2.5 million.... if he is able to not touch the principle. Making a lot of money when you're very young can be a super powerful thing.
The financials of Ajax are completely different than everyone else who is "Dutch". They are in another stratosphere in terms of what they can afford vs. the rest of the league including PSV. I mean Ajax just gave up on a guy they paid 12m Euros for after 18 months. I think they'll be OK letting someone they paid basically zero for go wherever he wants. I doubt the investment is significantly less than a million Euro on him too. The business model of Ajax is way smarter than holding onto guys who aren't good enough. They can make massive profits off sales so it's way smarter to just cycle go through guys and take the losses to find the gems. For instance, they signed two Colombians for 5m each before the '16 season. One was awful (Mateo Cassisera) and they eventually just gave him away. The other was Davinson Sanchez who they made a 35m profit off of.