Fulham relieved with draw against Twente….

September 16th, 2011 | by: Jan |

Comments(63)

ajax95

The CL season has started. Always fun to make sure we all are up to speed with the 10 records we hold in CL football:

1. Clarence Seedorf
Most cups: 4 (1995, 1998, 2003 and 2007)

2. Clarence Seedorf
Only winner with three different clubs: (Ajax, Real Madrid and AC Milan)

3. Edwin van der Sar
Only goal keeper to win it for two different clubs (Ajax en Manchester United)

4. Edwin van der Sar
Most clean-sheets (51)

5. Ruud van Nistelrooy
Most goals in one CL season (12 in the 2002/ 2003 season). Shares record with Lionel Messi who scored 12 in Barca’s last season.

6. Roy Makaay
Fastest goal scorer doelpuntenmaker, after 10 seconds (Bayern München – Real Madrid, 7 March 2007)

7. Patrick Kluivert
Youngest goal scorer in a CL finals (18 jaar and 327 days Ajax – AC Milan in 1995)

8. Edgar Davids
Most red cards in CL history (4)

9. Marco van Basten/Ruud van Nistelrooy
Four goals against in one game.

10. Ajax
Most concurrent away hames without conceding a goal. (7 games between November 1995 and December ‘96)

Ok, let’s go to the Club and their Dutchman at what in my view is the best performing team in Europe at the moment and the most likely heir to Barcelona: Manchester United.

I have always been in awe with the club and with Sir Alex in particular. What they demonstrated in the last weeks was tremendous. Results and quality. Rene Meulensteen is the first team coach and our fellow country man will be singled out for a background piece soon, as he is part of SAF’s “dream team”.

I got some flak from Fulham fans when I said a week back that they were mediocre. The guy said Fulham would whoop Twente’s tushy, well…. They didn’t. It was a damn fine performance of Fulham to secure a point… This comment ( and this post’s title) are meant as a sarcastic joke of course.

Fulham played well, at times, and could have put the three points away, but the Twente goalie was on song and as always Twente scored too. Their combination play at times was beautiful but their naive mistakes ( Tiendali!!) at times a pain for the eyes. What really struck me, watching the game, was that several Twente players got chances to shoot from 20 meters ( Ola John, Leroy Fer, Rosales) and produced whimpy soft shots… I couldn’t believe it!

ajax
Ajax’ airforce

Ajax believes it has a chance to progress in the Champions League ( it’s Frank and Johan’s bravado more than anything else, I have to say) but against a lacklustre Lyon Ajax simply forgot to score despite dominating and despite some good chances. But, the mantra is and will always be: in top games you only get so many chances and you have to take them! And Ajax didn’t. And that doesn’t look good.

Interestingly enough, under Frank de Boer Ajax’ average height jumped up. No more Mayor of Madurodam in the team, as it was called in the past. The relatively small Ajax players have been replaced by tall and strong guys: Eriksen and Sulejmani are the only ones below 1.80m. Derk Boerrigter, Sighthorsson, Theo Janssen and Dimitri Bulykin are all big boys. Ajax’ chances were mostly header chances and this team didn’t look like being pushed off the ball so easily as the former teams…

AZ swings. It scores a lot and all of this despite top scoring Sighthorsson who left for Ajax (and didn’t score). Maher is the 18 year old playmaker who scored his ( in the 4-1 over Malmo) and is happy to be important for his club. AZ is second in the Eredivisie and Gertjan Verbeek might well have found his success formula for winning and playing good football.

maher
Super talent Adam Maher

PSV won in a empty PSV stadium with 1-0, another Dries Mertens goal. He scored in eight concurrent games now. Kevin Strootman was highly displeased with the lack of fan support and mumbled “I came to PSV to play European football. Is this what that is? I could only hear their fans….”

Sneijder’s Inter might well be in trouble already. Losing at home is always bad, but against a team that I can’t even spell without checking? Not good.

Afellay could have and should have scored when given the chance, which would have given Barca the upper hand against AC Milan. The Italians had a typical Inzaghi night: two chances, two goals. Barca had that typical “let’s walk the ball into the net” mentality. Should have scored 5. Didn’t. See Ajax above.

Seedorf impressed with his game, Van Bommel played it safe ( but copped a yellow) and Emanuelson got some playing time and had to endure a serious charge on his legs.

Bayern won without Robben against Villareal with De Guzman.

Van Persie scored his first CL goal for the season.

Mario Been stuns Valencia at home, keeping the Spanish #3 at 0-0 with Racing Genk.

persie

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Displaying the most recent 25 comments from a total of 63 comments.

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By Alex | September 18th, 2011 at 3:41 pm

@Tiju hold the boat there.. jeez, its not like u were the only one ever to see a big future for V.Aanholt.. I think that was pretty much the majority concensus.. lol

Posted from Netherlands

By Petrovic | September 18th, 2011 at 4:42 pm

Tiju,Drenthe in holding midfield is a bad idea. I think that is a position which Wijnaldum could learn to play,not Drenthe…Because Drenthe always played on the sides,and Wijnaldum plays in the center AMF.

By jake | September 18th, 2011 at 5:54 pm

Stek’s injury concerns me, as he may not be able to get back his form or even hinder his development. Like de zeuuw injury in WC final, now he never play the same like before. After these brutal actions sgainst them, the dutch are still labelled the dirty ones, instead of Brazilian/ Italian/ latino players.

Posted from Australia

By jake | September 18th, 2011 at 6:32 pm

Not a good game of defeated Milan’s Mark van Bommel.
Player Review from gola.com:

The ageing veteran showed all of his 34 years when he allowed Gargano to ghost past his pitiful attempt at a tackle on his way to setting up Cavani for his second.

Posted from Australia

By Jeff | September 18th, 2011 at 8:45 pm

Primo, and you clearly a PSV fan. But that’s all right you are entitled. I can easily name 4 clear cut chances for Ajax as well. But so be it.

By jake | September 18th, 2011 at 8:53 pm

Hi guys,
Here is the link to http://11tegen11.wordpress.com, if anyone never know this website before, I found some good stuff and analysis about dutch footballs and leages, includng last match PSV-Ajax.

Posted from Australia

By Paul | September 18th, 2011 at 10:02 pm

WHOA

the goal.com dutch section now has recap videos for the week’s games!

http://www.goal.com/en/news/462/netherlands/2011/09/18/2671541/eredivisie-round-6-results-twente-go-top-after-win-over-ado

By Tiju | September 19th, 2011 at 5:32 am

@Alex i know you are supportive to youngsters..but when i put Annholt here,some peoples were laughing on that.i mean that.

By Tiju | September 19th, 2011 at 5:37 am

@Jake we must understand that Vanbommel is 35 and we Need some speedy boys in holding mid Positions.Though its seems Strootman ,Dejong are indispencible now.Next canidates are Deguzman and Maduro.i Feel Maduro plays like bommel(With vision),Clearly a tall fellow,with better footballing skills.

By eric | September 19th, 2011 at 8:21 am

From a neutral perspective, I think the 2-2 is a fair result for both Ajax and PSV. The match was evenly balanced. I enjoyed the passions shown from all the players.

If I had to pick who should have lamented the result the most, it would be PSV. With 2-1 up, they had control of possession and had clear chances to close the game. Matavz missed a huge opportunity with only Vermeer to beat. It should have been 3-1 right then, and game over. My biggest issue with PSV is their ability to finish up chances. Last week at the Europa league, they had chances after chances, but they couldn’t bury it (thus “only” the 1-0 win). I like Matavz, I thought he is very skillful, with or without the ball. But he needs to keep working hard on his finishing. Lens, on the other hand, frustrates me. He couldn’t get by his defender and his shots on goal were borderline embarrassing. Rutten also needs to figure out how to get the most out of Toivonen. It’s clear like a daylight that Ole can’t play in the hole as a no.10 because he doesn’t have the vision and ability to pass the ball forward. I’d love to see Wijnaldum being placed right behind the central forward and let him dictating the play. This should work better. Imho, Wijnaldum was under-utilized. He looked dangerous but he was only fully used as a counter-attack weapon. I think he should see the ball way more often. Enough said about Manolev, clearly the worst player on pitch by a mile.

From Ajax perspective, well.. I’d say Boilesen’s injury was a blessing in disguise. Because Enoh gave the team the much-needed steel. It drives me nut that De Boer hasn’t realized that his midfield was just not working out. Theo and Siem De Jong were nothing more than just fillers. Neither contributed positively in the build-up, and got exposed very badly in defending. (Granted, Theo was somewhat useful for set-piece, and De Jong for his heading). We saw this clearly in many of the previous matchs, and especially in the match against Lyon last week. But I guess De Boer wanted to justify his big spending on Theo. Personally I don’t think Theo is a good match for Ajax. Too static/slow, too soft, not enough creativity. He did astonishingly well at Twente last season because Wout Brama did a lot of covering behind him so he had a freedom to ‘play lazy.’ At Ajax, he is the man to do the covering, but unfortunately he is just not designed that way. Disappointing performance by Eriksen and Vertoghen. Given their status, they should have carried the team in the big game like this, but to my surprise, they both were relatively quiet (and somewhat shocking in Vertonghen’s case). Ajax MoTM for me is Vermeer. Van der Wiel did very well attacking forward, but his defending, as we all know, is pretty rubbish.

Posted from United States

By Caleb | September 19th, 2011 at 9:06 am

@Tiju – you list a hundred different youngsters here every week; of course a few are going to come good when you list so many. You know what they say, “even a broken clock is correct twice a day”

By Andrew | September 19th, 2011 at 11:48 am

Does anyone know how the PSV keeper is doing? That was scary.

@Eric, That is pretty much the way I saw it as well. I was thinking the same thing about Janssen while watching the match. If they want to get the most out of him, they’ll have to play a covering mf for him.

By Paul | September 19th, 2011 at 12:21 pm

@Eric

Your analysis was spot on man! I agree with what you said about the PSV formation and Ajax. Good work!

Posted from United States

By Paul | September 19th, 2011 at 12:28 pm

@ Andrew

http://www.goal.com/en/news/1549/rest-of-europe/2011/09/19/2673073/psvs-przemyslaw-tyton-leaves-hospital-after-horror-injury

Posted from United States

By Tiju | September 19th, 2011 at 12:54 pm

@Caleb i have not listed 100 youngesters ,i listed very few they were Drenthe,Maduro,Bruma,Annholt,Deguzman,Zuiverloon,mDe vrij,Wijnaldum,Luuk Dejong,Wolfswinkel and Castaginos and some time ago castelen.All are still up there.but its true that i mentioned kuyt 100 times in this blog.i have never been a fan of babel,kuyt.
My point for you
You need to have perfect blend of youth and experience to win a world cup/EC.Just see how SAF works with youngsters.

By Andrew | September 19th, 2011 at 4:02 pm

@Paul, Thank you. Good to see that it wasn’t worse.

By att23 | September 19th, 2011 at 4:16 pm

Hey been reading this blog for a while, always enjoy the discussions and articles. Just started thinking about the summer and the olympics. Will the netherlands have a team competiting for soccer? If so who will be on it?

By Rami | September 19th, 2011 at 5:30 pm

MY message to you my fellows in the Oranje and the future Dutch National teams… please lift the world cup one day as it was my life dream and it never happened despite being whiskers close . However, my life dream remains even when im dead for when i hear one day that the Dutch won the world cup, I will rest in peace.

By Alex | September 19th, 2011 at 6:27 pm

Dutch-21 failed to qualify for the U-21 Euro Championships, therefore will not send a team to the olympics.. unfortunately.
@ Rami, uhhm, you sound as if ur 1. former dutch international player, 2. dying.. xD whats up..

Posted from Netherlands

By van den Berg | September 19th, 2011 at 6:33 pm

@ Alex or 3 – extremely drunk

By Wissam | September 19th, 2011 at 9:26 pm

or 4. need to get laid!

Posted from United States

By Mexican but Oranje( Miguel Rosado) | September 20th, 2011 at 12:39 am

Good news:

* Babel is doing well he needs consistency and if he keeps focused on football he can become a great player!!!.
* Braafheid plays every week.
* Heitinga has recovered I am sure he’ll play next week.
* Drenthe scored for Everton! I hope he can finally grow up.
* Van Aanholt plays every week so does Zuiverloon for Mallorca.
* Wolfswinkel started the campaign on the bench but he won himselft a spot in the starting XI.
* Schaars plays every week.

Bad news:

* Elia and Maduro have been benched by their teams
* Bruma started the campaing as starter but lost his place.
* Castaignos isn’t playing at all.

By Rami (the original) | September 20th, 2011 at 1:45 am

Hmm, Seems like theres two Ramis out there now. watch out!

By Rami (the original) | September 20th, 2011 at 5:08 am

WTF was Castaignos thinking moving to Inter? Could his career be over? i know its to early to say but will get get any game time?

By Jordan 13s | September 30th, 2011 at 6:27 pm

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