Extended and improved deal for Ryan Babel
07 July: Ryan Babel has agreed to the terms of a new
contract at the Amsterdam ArenA today. The young
striker will get a considerable pay-raise and also agreed
to a one year extension of his old deal: his new contract will
expire on 30 June 2008. Babel, who will wear jersey number 11
this season, is the third Ajax youngster to sign an extended
and upgraded deal this summer, after
Hedwiges Maduro and
Urby Emanuelson.
Ryan Babel (born Amsterdam, 19 December 1986) came all the
way through the youth ranks of the Amsterdam club and was
generally regarded as one of the gems of De Toekomst when he
made his first team début for Ajax on
01 February 2004, in the Eredivisie home fixture against
ADO Den Haag. Babel's unexpected début at age
17 was a bit of an 'emergency measure': all Ajax-1 strikers
were unavailable at the time.
The Den Haag match would remain Babel's only first team
appearance until
20 November 2004, when he finally had his second
Ajax-1 appearance in the Eredivisie away game at De Graafschap.
He scored immediately and continued the score as a substitute
in the weeks thereafter, becoming an Ajax-1 regular. For
a few weeks the number of minutes he required to score
a goal was the lowest in the history of the
Eredivisie. Babel got to make his début for the
Dutch national team on
27 March 2005 in Holland's World Cup qualifier
against Romania in Bucharest. He graced
his Oranje début with a goal in the dying
minutes.
Things went fast for Ryan Babel last season and it all
seemed to take its toll in the latter months of the season, in
which Babel struggled and had trouble finding the net. He
mostly played as a left winger in this period. In total, he had
21 Eredivisie appearances (7 goals) for Ajax. He also played
3 Amstel Cup games (1 goal) and 4 games in UEFA
competition (1 goal). This summer he was succesful for the
Holland U-20 team during the World Cup tournament in The
Netherlands. (MP)
Source: Ajax.nl, VI.nl
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