Ajax have sacked head coach John Heitinga following the club’s poor performance in the Champions League this season. His contract had been due to run until June 2027.

Former goalkeeper Fred Grim will take temporary charge of the first team while Ajax looks for a new permanent head coach, the Amsterdam club said on Thursday.

Technical director Alex Kroes called the move “a painful decision”, but said the club had seen “too little development” in recent months. “We have dropped points unnecessarily and, although we gave John time to work with a changing squad, we believe it is best for the club to appoint someone else,” Kroes said.

Kroes has also offered to quit, saying that given his contract ends this season, he would step down to allow a new technical director to start up earlier. Ajax are currently bottom of the Champions League table after four defeats and lying in fourth place in the Eredivisie.

Ajax has suspended John Heitinga with immediate effect. The head coach’s contract was due to run until June 30, 2027, but will now be terminated. The same applies to assistant coach Marcel Keizer. Ajax is looking for a new head coach; in the meantime, Fred Grim will take over… pic.twitter.com/phMVZ7PbYI

— AFC Ajax (@AFCAjax) November 6, 2025

Earlier on Thursday it emerged that Kroes had met former manager Erik ten Hag this week.

Sources told AD.nl that the two men held extensive talks at Kroes’s home in Huizen, while stressing that it was “only a coffee meeting” that was scheduled some time ago.

Ten Hag, who led Ajax to the semi-finals of the Champions League in 2019, is a free agent after being sacked by Bayer Leverkusen in August just three matches into his reign, though he has also been linked to the vacant manager’s job at English Premier League club Wolverhampton Wanderers.

Heitinga has been at the helm since Francesco Farioli’s abrupt departure at the end of last season, but fans saw his lack of experience as a first-team coach – he was previously assistant to Arne Slot at Liverpool – as evidence that the club lacks ambition.

Ajax have a chance of salvaging some pride in their next Champions League match on November 25 when they take on Benfica, the only other team with no points from their opening four games.