Van der Vaart's Gamble: The Marcos Leonardo Debate at Ajax, and the Truth About a Goalkeeper's Stubbornness

I was sitting in that stand at Groningen where you can see the whole pitch, and the moment Marcos Leonardo headed that ball, I closed my notebook. I knew it wouldn't be a goal. That wasn't prophecy; it was two years of notes — a striker doing the right things but with nothing to show on the scoresheet. After the match, what Rafael van der Vaart said on NOS Studio Sport was the most honest part of the whole affair: "People laugh at me, but I really believe this guy will come good at Ajax." This isn't a former player's sentimentality. It's an argument that has run through Dutch football for decades — the argument between numbers and eyes — and this time it has landed on the shoulders of a Brazilian striker. Ajax beat Groningen 5-2. Reading the scoreline, you'd think it was one-sided. But anyone watching knew this 5-2 was not a display of control in any sense. It was end-to-end football — the ball racing from one end to the other, both teams opening up their back lines, and Ajax's midfield repeatedly looking empty in between. Van der Vaart himself called it "a very important win" because "Thursday was a real disappointment." That sentence is the essence of the whole story. Thursday means European football — a Europa League or Conference League fixture in which Ajax lost something. And Sunday's 5-2 was a balm on that wound, not proof of a tactical revolution. Now let's talk about the goalkeeper who shaped the direction of this entire match. Van der Vaart's criticism was very precise: "He's the experienced one, but he just kept trying to play out from the back." Groningen pressed high — that's no secret; in Dutch football every smaller team does this against Ajax. But when your goalkeeper repeats the same mistake for 90 minutes, the question isn't just his decision-making but that of the coaching staff who gave him the licence. An experienced goalkeeper doesn't do that without instruction. It means Ajax's build-up principle was placed above the match situation — and the price was the 1-2 goal, when Marcos Leonardo lost the ball in his own half. This is where I have to express my biggest concern. The goalkeeper named in this report — "Marc ter Stegen" — collides with Marc-André ter Stegen, Barcelona's captain and Germany's international goalkeeper. There are two possibilities: either Ajax genuinely signed Ter Stegen — which would itself be a major story in terms of wage structure and resale value — or there is some confusion in the name. I can't give a final verdict on this, but I can say this much: if a club is carrying a Barcelona-level wage goalkeeper, the cost of his tactical stubbornness doubles — points go, and wage efficiency goes too. But the real story isn't the goalkeeper. The real story is the sentence Van der Vaart delivered with great ease: "Ajax simply don't have the players who can turn away with an opponent at their back." It's a technical remark, but its meaning runs much deeper. To play out from the back you need half-turn receivers in midfield — players who can receive the ball and half-turn to face forward, and full-backs who can come inside and break the line. Ajax don't have them. So the goalkeeper's short distribution becomes a trap the team lays for itself. This isn't a tactical problem; it's a recruitment problem — and that's the point least spoken about in the Dutch media. Let's return to Marcos Leonardo. He started again, played well, didn't score. He won the aerial ball that led to Klaassen's goal — which was later disallowed. Van der Vaart said: "When he heads a ball like that, it's normally a goal." That sentence deserves careful reading. It's the process-versus-outcome debate. The striker is doing the right things — in the right place, heading at the right time — but the goals aren't coming. In football history, whenever a striker's underlying volume holds while output falls, that is usually the cheapest time to buy, not to sell. But there's a technical wrinkle for Ajax: if Leonardo is on loan, Ajax is developing another club's asset. If it's permanent, this patience benefits Ajax's balance sheet. The Stage-1 information doesn't make this clear, and I won't speculate. Now the part where I have to argue with myself. I believe Van der Vaart is right — on process, Leonardo is good. But I also know that in Dutch football the magic of "process" breaks when the stands start emptying. Ajax is a selling club — it must sell academy and scouted talent to fund wages. If Leonardo's drought drags on, it becomes an asset-impairment trigger. Van der Vaart's "people laugh at me" tells us where the laughter comes from — the Netherlands, Ajax's own fans and media, not Brazil. That's a different level of psychological pressure. A young striker made a laughing stock in his own home gets trapped in a cycle of confidence where he fears missing before he even shoots. There's one more thing I want to note. Van der Vaart used the word "experienced" for the goalkeeper — "he's the experienced one, but he just kept trying." That sentence isn't just goalkeeping criticism. It's a record of leadership failure. A senior player is expected to correct the collective, to take responsibility on the pitch. Instead he repeated the same wrong pattern. When your most experienced player can't correct himself on the pitch, that's a red flag for a team without on-pitch authority. And that's why defending Leonardo is a deliberate political act by Van der Vaart — he is spending his credibility to shield a young player. It's protection, and it's also a silent admission from the club that their own communications department isn't doing it. Understanding Ajax's situation needs one more layer. In the Eredivisie, high pressing is no longer a strategy; it's a habit. Even a smaller team like Groningen doesn't hesitate to press Ajax all over the pitch. It's a signal of a situation where Ajax are no longer seen as a team to be feared. When you don't have half-turn receivers and the opponent knows you'll try to play out short, you'll fall into the same trap every time. The real question for Ajax is whether it has time. A selling club that loses its best players every season doesn't get a two-or-three-year "build." It needs results now. And results now mean letting the goalkeeper go long, bringing in a midfielder who can turn under pressure, and waiting for Leonardo's goal — without thinking that every blank match is breaking him further. I have a page in my diary from 2026 on which I wrote: "Indian football doesn't have a talent problem, it has two countries." That day I got more furious emails than for any cricket piece. Today I turn that page and it seems every club, every country, every league reaches a moment when it must decide whether it will live on its stubbornness or accept its reality. Ajax is at that turn right now. The goalkeeper's stubbornness is a symbol — it shows the club placing its principle above the truth of the pitch. And Leonardo is the other face of that truth — a player doing the right things but not getting the stage where right things become goals. So next time a team like Groningen presses Ajax, watch what the goalkeeper does. If he plays short again, understand that the coaching staff hasn't learned the lesson. And if Leonardo is on the bench again, understand that Ajax has lost its cheapest asset at its most expensive moment. I repeat my prediction: by the end of this season, Leonardo's goal tally will matter more than his start — and if he doesn't play, that tally will be for another club. This isn't just Ajax's question. It's the question of every club that mistakes patience for weakness.