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Ajax away to meet Olympique

March 12th, 2009 | By: Jan | 9 Comments »

Enoh ready to roll….

Marco van Basten and his troupe will travel to Marseille for the first leg of their UEFA Cup match (the only Dutch team still alive in Europe, now Madrid is out ).

Eric Gerets, Marseille’s coach, loves to play Ajax. “I think I won most games against them, both as a player and as a coach. I remember my clashes with Bryan Roy. He was an artist and a dancer almost, but he was tough in the challenges. We’d give it our all, but we’d always shake hands after the game. But, that was another era. Now both Marseille and Ajax are in development. But, although we beat PSV and Twente this season already, I rate Ajax minimally as high as them, so it will be tough.”

Marco van Basten doesn’t seem worried. Enoh is back from injury and goalie Stekelenburg is deemed fit as well. “Two fit goalies, both very good. I will have to make a tough decision….”

Gabri, Sno, Kennedy and Vertonghen remain in Amsterdam, much like Robbie Wielaert who can’t play for Ajax in the European cup.

Tags: Enoh, Gerets, Group C, Stekelenburg, Van Basten, Vermeer

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Comments

By finnster01 | March 12th, 2009 at 7:25 am

Eric Gerets why don’t you shut your big Belgian mouth?

“I think I won most games against them, both as a player and as a coach.”

Who cares what you did? Football is a team sport and not about individuals and your own achievements.

I admired and actually respected him as a player as I rated him pretty highly in his prime, but just as Van Basten can’t manage people, neither can Gerets.

Go on Ajax. Let’s destroy some of those stats. I know what I would be putting on the wall in the dressing room…

By Alex | March 12th, 2009 at 12:03 pm

not hat hes from Belgium what bothers me, but he has adopted french arrogance. Leonardo and rommedahl really should score lucky goals agaisnt Marseille and kick his ass out.
BTW Porto showed Atletico the door. And the team looked no better without Heitinga in it, can’t see why the coach would put Perea and Pablo in over him. Shitty Resino. But Porto were lucky, they had a 2-2 draw the first time against a very weak Atletico and 0-0 against a mediocre Atletico. I bet PSV would have gone through as well against Atletico in its bad form.
But PL is NOT! the strongest league. It just has the strongest and richest topteams. but the bottom teams are shit and 70 % of all PL clubs just a few points from each other.

Couldn’t we start a petition or something to create a bigger league for dutch topclubs/semi top clubs, with best belgian/scottish/danish teams or something. I’m tired of seeing dutch clubs lose dramatically from , Atletico, HSV, Liverpool. Benelux is 27 million people. Scotland like 6, Denmark is like 5.5 million people.

Or maybe just put our top 5 clubs in Bundesliga Ajax has way more potential and reputation than Werder Bremen/HSV/Stuttgart. Within a few seasons they would have need a 80-100.000 stadium and be three times richer. Guaranteed.

Posted from Netherlands

By Jeroen | March 12th, 2009 at 12:47 pm

There has actually been a debate the last couple of years as to whether they should merge the Belgian and Dutch leagues. I’ve always been a strong supporter of this; it would get rid of the really crappy teams like FC Volendam (and Feyenoord haha )that really dont belong in the eredivisie and replace them with relatively much better clubs like Anderlecht. It wouldn’t make it as great as the Premier league, but it would certainly improve the quantity by a lot in a region which is geographically much smaller than England. It would probably end up being something like 18 teams, 12 Dutch and 6 Belgian. If they did this and the 6+5 rule, then the Dutch league would be improved by a factor of 10…easily.

Posted from Netherlands

By sonneveld | March 12th, 2009 at 2:42 pm

ajax starts vermeer over stekelenburg(our number 1!) van der wiel as CB and aissati is in their aswell.

People watching can you tell me how all three of them do

By Caleb | March 12th, 2009 at 3:02 pm

Completely unrelated: I’ve never watched the Netherlands women’s team (or really any women’s soccer team for that matter), but I think I just might start after seeing this girl: http://i42.tinypic.com/rgxlz7.jpg

I think I’m in love!

Posted from Canada

By Caleb | March 12th, 2009 at 3:03 pm

In action!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4L0–3peltw

Posted from Canada

By Andrew | March 12th, 2009 at 4:04 pm

@Alex, you’re not alone in your thinking. About 10-15 years ago there was talk about starting an “Atlantic League” comprised of the bigger teams from Belgium, Netherlands, Scotland…never got off the ground…wonder if they’ll re-think that.

Posted from United States