Midfielder Laurent Delorge pens two year Ajax deal
10 May: Ajax have officially presented their first new
signing for the new season. Laurent Delorge, 27 year-old
offensive midfielder from Belgium, penned a two-year contract
(until 30 June 2009) at the Amsterdam ArenA today. His contract
includes an option for Ajax to extend his deal until 30
June 2011. Delorge played for ADO Den Haag this season, but his
contract included a special clause that allowed Delorge to
leave the club on a free transfer if the The Hague club would
get relegated from the Eredivisie.
Laurent Delorge (born Leuven/Louvain, Belgium, 21 July 1979)
started his career as a professional footballer at AA Ghent in
his native Belgium. The 19 year-old never made his first
team début for the Ghent Buffalos, but made
enough of an impression in their lower teams to win a contract
at Coventry City, who were in the English Premiership at
the time, in the summer of 1998.
After having spent three seasons in Coventry's reserves
team he finally made his first team début for the
English club in the fall of 2001. Delorge's first team
début came just after Coventry's relegation to
Division One. In the next season and a half Delorge would
have 30 league appearances for Coventry, in which he scored two
goals. In early 2003 he moved back to Belgium and made his
début in the highest division (First Class) of his
motherland for Lierse SK. In two and a half seasons at Lierse,
Delorge had 67 league appearances (11 goals).
Delorge's fine form at Lierse drew the attention
of Belgium's supreme powerhouse in football: Anderlecht from
Brussels. Delorge signed a contract at the purple and
white in the summer of 2005. He saw action in only 12 league
games for Anderlecht and, after one year, moved abroad for the
second time his career, this time to ADO Den Haag in the Dutch
Eredivisie. The transfer was bittersweet: Delorge and his
Anderlecht team-mate Marius Mitu were let go by the club after
admitting to investigators that they had influenced the outcome
of Belgian league matches while playing for Lierse.
In The Netherlands, Delorge made a new start. In one
season at ADO Den Haag he had 28 official appearances (5 goals)
for the team that finished bottom in the Eredivisie this
season. He was generally regarded as one of Den Haag's best
players of the season. And then it all went fast: on 29 April
Laurent Delorge was playing for a relegated team, twelve days
he later he may call himself an Ajacied.
"I've worked very hard for this," Delorge said, right after
having penned his deal at the ArenA. "But I never dreamt of
being asked to play at Ajax. I hope that I can adjust swiftly
to the higher level of football. Things can go fast in
football. I think that Ajax constantly look at players and know
who can be a reinforcement for the team. However, I understand
that this is not a logical step to make: from a
relegated side to an absolute top club. But it was always
my goal, and I am glad that I get that opportunity now. I am
also grateful to ADO Den Haag: they gave me the chance to
develop and show myself in the Eredivisie."
"We've had a rough season," Delorge continued, "with loads
of negativity. It's hard to come to terms with relegation. I'm
going to take some time off now, but at the same time I realize
that the new season has already started for me. I will make
sure that I am 100% fit on day one. I know how important it is
to make it through the pre-season campaign without
problems."
Laurent Delorge is the first new Ajacied for the 2007-2008
season... He can hardly believe it. "I am a player of a top
club now," he told Ajax.nl. Delorge's words in Belgian
newspaper Gazet van Antwerpen were even more
flattering to the Amsterdam club: "Playing for Ajax... it's a
dream. Ajax is an even more beautiful club than
Anderlecht. The people at Coventry City used to
speak about European football in a rather condescending way.
But Ajax, that was something different: if someone mentioned
Ajax even the English waxed lyrical." (MP)
Source: Ajax.nl
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