Justin Kluivert has hit out at the Ajax board and confirmed he wants to leave the club.
The Netherlands international has been heavily linked with a move away from the Dutch giants after emerging as one of the most exciting talents in Europe.
Several Premier League clubs are monitoring the 19-year-old and it has now emerged that Tottenham tried to broker a deal for the versatile forward last summer.
Tottenham signed Davinson Sanchez from Ajax and wanted to include Kluivert in the transfer before loaning him back to the Dutch side for the next two seasons.
However, Kluivert was denied the chance to even entertain the offer and has now hit out at the club’s handling of his career.
“I’m not renewing my contract at Ajax,” he told Volkskrant. “Ajax wants me to extend my contract so that they can ask for me [when they sell]. What do they really want? My plan was to stay, but a lot has happened lately.
“The fans think that it’s only about money, while everyone knows I had it good. I was not waiting for money at all. Football is important. I want to develop myself.
“I was more or less told that I had to sign up. Otherwise I had to leave. They you start thinking.
“I head that [Tottenham’s offer] at the last minute. That says nothing about Ajax, but the people in the club. Somewhere they were laughing. You see how the football world works.
“If you get higher up, it looks like a game. They do what they want. I’m getting that feeling again now: they do what they want.
“I had two years and thought, ‘Do it.’ My idea was to stay. But then it turns out different.
“As a youth player, you see none of that. As a boy, everything is still fun. You have a nice game on Saturday. As soon as you get higher up, it is often about everything but football, it’s all about peripheral issues.”
The teenager endured a thoroughly impressive first full campaign as a professional despite coming to blows with the club towards the end of the season.
Kluivert, who won his first Netherlands cap in March, scored or assisted 15 goals in 30 league appearances, garnering a WhoScored rating of 7.51.
In fact, only Hakim Ziyech (8.21) and David Neres (7.85) secured a higher WhoScored rating in the league of all Ajax players this season.
