"Welcome home!" - Edgar Davids returns to Ajax
30 January: It's official: Edgar Davids will return home.
Back to the city where he was born - and to the
club that made him a star. The 33 year-old midfielder, who
spent the last season and a half at Tottenham Hotspur in
the English Premiership, penned an 18-month contract at the
Amsterdam ArenA, which will expire on 30 June 2008. According
to most press reports
Ajax will not have to pay Tottenham a
transfer fee. Davids' contract at White Hart Lane would have
expired this summer.
Martin van Geel helps Edgar
Davids display his new shirt. [Photo: Ajax.nl]
The first reports claiming that the transfer was a done deal
appeared in Dutch and English media on Friday, but they
were very premature. Ajax and Davids did not need much time to
agree on the terms of the player's contract, but Ajax and Spurs
were still talking yesterday, while Davids was in Amsterdam to
undergo his medical at the V.U. Hospital. Today, the deal was
finalized, so that Davids could be officially
presented during a press conference at the ArenA, at 14:30 CET
today. Technical director Martin van Geel gave the player his
Ajax shirt with jersey number 13. Why 13? "March 13, 1973. Does
that ring a bell?" said the midfielder, whose birthday is
March 13th.
Edgar Davids (born Amsterdam, 13 March 1973) is an Amsterdam
'street kid' and a product of the Ajax youth system. He
played for Ajax youth teams in all age categories before making
his first team début on 08 September
1991, in an Eredivisie home game against RKC, under
head-coach Leo Beenhakker. Beenhakker would resign later
that month. His successor was Louis van Gaal, the man who would
make Ajax the best football team in the world - and Edgar
Davids a superstar. Davids, originally a left winger,
would develop into an aggressive, hard-working left-footed
midfielder, a 'pitbull', a fighter, with tremendous work
ethic and 'bite'.
Between September 1991 and May 1996 Edgar Davids played
106 Eredivisie games, 6 domestic cup games and 33 matches in
UEFA competition for Ajax. He scored 33 goals in total and won
an amazing array of silverware with the club, including three
Dutch league titles (1994, 1995, 1996), one Dutch cup (1993),
three Dutch Super Cups (1993, 1994, 1995), the UEFA Cup (1992),
the Champions League (1995), the European Super Cup (1995) and
the World Cup for club teams (1995).
Davids left Ajax in May 1996. His very last game for Ajax
was the Champions League final against Juventus, at Rome's
Olympic Stadium, and his very last ball contact a penalty
kick, which he failed to convert. Davids' miss (and that
of Sonny Silooy) sealed Ajax's fate in the
shoot-out. With his new club, AC Milan, he played against
Ajax in the opening game of the brand-new Amsterdam ArenA in
August of that year. Davids spent a season and half at AC
Milan (1996-1997), followed by more than six seasons at
Juventus (1997-2003), one at FC Barcelona (2003-2004), one at
Internazionale (2004-2005) and one and a half at Tottenham
Hotspur (2005-2007). In total, Edgar Davids played 350 top
flight league games (30 goals) in The Netherlands, Italy,
Spain and England. Meanwhile, he collected 74 caps (6 goals)
for Oranje. At FC Barcelona, Davids worked under his
former Ajax team-mate Frank Rijkaard and... his new Ajax boss,
Henk ten Cate.
Davids' first year at Spurs was succesful, but in the
current season he saw action in only nine games (one
of which was, unfortunately for Ajax, a UEFA Cup fixture, which
means that Davids will not be eligible for Ajax's 'European'
matches in the second half of the current season). Davids
got into a conflict with Spurs' Dutch manager, Martin Jol, and
was soon out of favour. It wasn't the only conflict of his
career. During Euro 1996 in England, Holland boss Guus Hiddink
sent Davids home when the midfielder told a Swiss
journalist that Hiddink "should not stick his head
in white players' a**es". The biggest crisis in Davids'
career, however, was not his conflict with Guus Hiddink,
but the ban handed to him by the FIFA in 2001,
when he tested positive for nandrolone, a banned anabolic
steroid.
But all that belongs to the past. Edgar Davids, the man with
the distinctive protective goggles (necessary as Davids suffers
from glaucoma), has returned to where it all
started. Just before his press presentation the
prodigal son had his first training
session on the training pitch in front of the Amsterdam
ArenA. Edgar Davids is expected to be fit for
Sunday's 'Classic' against Feyenoord. Indeed, not a bad
'début game'... (MP)
Sources: Ajax.nl, VI.nl
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