Owen Wijndal

Owen Wijndal is a product of the AZ Alkmaar academy, having arrived at the club in 2010 after starting out at ZVV Zaandijk and HFC Haarlem. He worked his way up through Jong AZ before making his senior debut in 2017, and by the time he left the club in 2022 he had made 143 official appearances. That development earned him individual recognition along the way: he was named Eredivisie Talent of the Month four times between August 2019 and December 2020, and Player of the Month in August 2019 and again in May 2021.

Ajax paid a fixed fee of €10 million for him in 2022, signing him on a five-year contract. His time at the club has been interrupted rather than settled: for the 2023–24 season he was sent out on loan to Royal Antwerp, where he made 29 appearances and scored once. He started in the 2024 Belgian Cup final, which Antwerp lost to Union SG, missing out on a trophy the Belgian club had won in previous seasons without him. Ajax also lost the 2022 Johan Cruyff Shield, and were knocked out of the KNVB Cup by his former club, AZ Alkmaar.

At international level, Wijndal made his senior debut for the Netherlands in October 2020 against Mexico and was picked for the squad at Euro 2020, wearing the number 5 shirt, though he did not feature in any of the matches. His involvement with the national team has since tailed off, and he was left out of the squad for Euro 2024.