Defender · #21

Jorrel Hato

Netherlands · 6'0" · 20

$48.4M

From Ajax

$164K

per week

Apps

Goals

Assists

His role

Hato is the left wing-back. He joins the attack to provide width and drops alongside the back three without the ball. His background at centre-back makes him a more defensive option than a conventional winger.

His story

01
Record
He captained Ajax in Europe at seventeen
Ajax gave Hato the armband against AEK Athens when he was seventeen years and 282 days old. No younger player had captained the club in Europe. He was already Ajax's third-youngest league debutant, behind only Ryan Gravenberch and Clarence Seedorf, and that season he played almost every minute while most players his age were still in the youth team.
02
Drama
An error and a red card against Spain
Hato's loose pass gave Spain the opening goal of a Nations League quarter-final in March 2025. In the 82nd minute, he was sent off for a late tackle on Robin Le Normand, and Spain equalised in stoppage time before eventually winning the tie on penalties. It was a brutal international lesson: one mistake, one red card and a lead lost before the night was over.
03
Off the pitch
Rotterdam, by way of Curaçao and Cape Verde
Hato was born in Rotterdam to a Curaçaoan father and a Cape Verdean mother. Ajax recruited him from Sparta Rotterdam's academy at twelve and trusted him with its captaincy five years later. By nineteen, Chelsea were willing to pay £35.5m for a defender whose story already connected three countries and two of the Netherlands' great academies.