Ajax appoints Carolien Gehrels to lead Supervisory Board; First woman to do so

Ajax officially appointed Carolien Gehrels as the chair of its supervisory board. Her appointment was approved with no dissenting votes at a special shareholders’ meeting at the Johan Cruijff ArenA on Monday. She is the first woman to lead the supervisory board at the Amsterdam football club.

Before the vote, Gehrels (57) said that her family has been “connected to Amsterdam for centuries,” referring to her great-uncle Freek Gehrels, who won the championship with Ajax in 1917, Parool reports. She said that she had “thoroughly ascertained” the situation at Ajax and had spoken to her predecessors. She did not go into the recent, turbulent past. “Ajax speaks on the field. Yesterday was another wonderful story,” she said, referring to the win over Fortuna which put Ajax in the lead for the first time in over two years.

Gehrels succeeds Michael van Praag, who temporarily returned as Ajax director at the end of 2023. The club was in a crisis after several high-profile resignations in quick succession, including technical director Sven Mislintat, president of the supervisory board Pier Eringa, and trainer Maurice Steijn. They stepped down amid weak performances and disappointing results in the first half of the 2023/24 season. At one point, Ajax was even in last place on the Eredivisie rankings.

Van Praag was appointed with the understanding that he would step down once calm had returned to the club, and he did so after Gehrels was voted in, according to Parool. At his last meeting, Van Praag quoted his favorite description of the Amsterdam football club: “Ajax is like waving reeds, it always comes back up.”