Ajax to compensate player who suffered brain damage after on-field collapse
The Hague, Feb 21 (EFE).- Ajax are set to pay 7.9 million euro in compensation to the family of Abdelhak Nouri, who sustained brain damage after collapsing during a game in 2017, the Dutch club announced on Monday.
“The Nouri family and Ajax have now reached an agreement on the compensation to be paid by the club,” Ajax said in a statement.
“The proceedings brought by the Nouri family before the KNVB Arbitration Committee have been terminated as a result of this amicable settlement,” the statement ran.
Ajax will pay the compensation after acknowledging that the on-field medical care provided to the player when he collapsed in July 2017 during a pre-season friendly in Austria was not adequate.
After a nearly three-year coma, Nouri began to communicate with his family through slight eyebrows movements in March 2020, his older brother revealed in a television report.
“We greatly appreciate the way in which Abdelhak’s family cares for him day and night with a lot of love and attention,” Ajax CEO Edwin van der Sar told the club’s website.
“When I visit him, I am always welcomed with open arms by the family. That also applies to other Ajax colleagues and we greatly appreciate that,” he added.
No Ajax player will wear Nouri’s No. 34 shirt “unless the Nouri family and Ajax want to make an exception together,” he said.
The player’s father, Mohammed Nouri said in the Ajax statement that “It is good that the discussion about liability and its consequences is a thing of the past and that we can look forward together”. EFE
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