Royal Antwerp will respond to the suspension imposed on Marc Overmars. The club will first study the ruling and the reasons, after which communications will be made.
Earlier on Thursday, the Institute of Sports Jurisprudence (ISR) ruled that Overmars would not be allowed to work in Dutch football for a year. The ISR found that fifty-year-old Overmars had been guilty of prolonged infringing behavior during his time at Ajax.
The penalty only applies within the Dutch Football Association and organizations affiliated with the Dutch Football Association. Overmars could therefore continue as manager at the Belgian champions, although the question is whether Antwerp are ready to do so. Overmars began his career with the Belgian club a year and a half ago, shortly after his departure from Ajax.
The Disciplinary Committee considered one substantiated complaint. The complainant had submitted more than three hundred pages of messages via WhatsApp over a period of more than 3.5 years, which were studied by an expert.
“The vast majority of those messages (from Marc Overmars to the reporter) are sexually explicit and contain very one-sided explicit material (text and images),” ISR wrote. The other accusations have not been sufficiently proven.
