AZ Alkmaar – Werder Bremen 0-0

AZ played Werder last night in the girst leg of the qursrter finals UEFA cup. In a constrained match neither of the teams found the net and AZ will have to score next week in Bremen to go through.

Werder came to Alkmaar to keep the score as it was at the beginning and as such they can be seen as the psychological winners of the match. Van Gaal however was adament that his team would not conceide a goal and was not dissatisfied with the draw. “We played well, we had some chances and we didn’t give a lot away. It’s still a 50% chance for us to go through.”

Now, Louis has shown a distorted reality field before and after having seen this match (at 4.30 in the morning) I must say that I expected more from AZ. The pace was slow, the build up very deliberate and the forwards played a bit sloppy at times. Pressure, fear of not losing or maybe lack of quality? Because although AZ is a strong side in Holland, the line-up of Werder did have names like Klose, Fritz, Diego, Frings and Mertensacker.

Werder did what German teams do in away games. Sit back, allow the opponent to attack and wait for little mistakes in order to counter-attack. One of those attacks resulted in the first real chance in the 14th minute for Fritz. Goalie Waterman saved. Apart from a good header by left midfielder/winger Martens, AZ couldn’t create much more. In the second half, AZ started playing with more pace and Dembele got a huge opportunity, but he chose the wrong corner of the goal. It was typical for the match that the biggest upheaval came after a wrong back header by Werder defender Wome, who almost passed his own goalie. After a huge sprint he was able to save the ball from going in his own goal.

The ref made an even bigger blunder. Steinson, the Icelandic right back of AZ, played the ball with his head, while lying on the ground (!). The ref thought it was a hand ball and gave the AZ player the yellow card. His first, but the ref thought it was his second. So he gave him the red card. The linesman and the Werder players needed to convince the man in black that he was wrong…

Next week, AZ expects to get more space to play. “Werder can’t hide next week and will allow us more room on the pitch. We have never played two matches in a row without scoring, so we are pretty confident and feel we have a good chance to make it through.” According to the AZ trainer.