Escude header earns three points for struggling Ajax
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Holland Casino Eredivisie
Amsterdam ArenA, Amsterdam
Sunday, 22 February,
2003
What a blissful week for Julien
Escudé... The first ever Frenchman on the Ajax
payrole had to report off last week, hours before the
Eredivisie away fixture at FC Volendam. While his
team-mates were playing, Escudé was holding
his first child, a healthy son named Ange. He
returned to the Ajax-1 line-up this week - and became the match
winner against FC Twente, by scoring his first goal as an
Ajacied (and only his second official one ever): 1-0.
Escudé's moment came as
early as in the 12th minute, as Wesley Sneijder deftly
curled a corner kick into the Twente penalty
area. Escudé came graciously flying in
to nod home. "What a great feeling! And
what a week... Last week I became a father
and now I score my first goal...", said the Ajax match
winner. His goal put Ajax six points clear of PSV,
with a game in hand to make that nine, after the reigning Dutch
champions' Saturday night stumble at SC Heerenveen
(3-2).
Julien Escudé scores his
first Ajax goal and - so it turned out - the
winning goal against FC Twente. [Photo: Gerard van
Hees/Ajax.nl]
Ajax
took the lead early, but could already have scored three
minutes earlier, as Daniël de Ridder smoothly cut into the
penalty area from the right flank and beat goalkeeper Cees
Paauwe with a low, diagonal shot, which - however - hit the far
post. It underscores the fact that Ajax started well
against the 'Reds', probably inspired by PSV's defeat
and feelings of revenge, after Ajax's own embarrassing 2-0 slip-up in Enschede in
December.
After
the hosts' stormy opening phase, however, there was hardly
anything to enjoy. Ajax worked considerably harder than in last
week's Volendam encounter, and would remain upright because of
that, but was never fluent in attack. Wesley Sneijder once
again drew the attention in the much discussed
'number ten' position, by actually not drawing any
attention at all. Last week Sneijder and his buddy
Rafaël once again failed to prove that
they ought to be fielded together. The
combination of the two does not seem to work. Against Twente,
in default of Van der Vaart, Sneijder was on his own,
which usually works better, but not today: he had a dreadful
game.
Yannis
Anastasiou, meanwhile, kept Wesley Sonck benched, but did
not impress either. Finally, Victor Sikora was as
energetic as he was ineffective, as usual. The only
regular threat to the Twente defense was Daniël de Ridder,
the only Ajax forward who had a reasonably good
performance.
After a
first half in which both teams had a handful of hardly
noteworthy attempts, Ajax first got into real trouble
in the first minutes after the half-time break, immediately
from kick-off. In fact, it was a miracle that Twente's former
PSV wingers (Georgi Gakhokidze and Adil Ramzi) did not score as
they came face-to-face with Maarten Stekelenburg. Two amazing
scrimmages occurred, only two or three steps away from the
Ajax goal. On both occasions a fearless Stekelenburg came to
rescue. "In that phase he surely saved us",
admitted Ronald Koeman after the game.
It gave
the guests the feeling that grabbing a result was
actually possible. In the remainder of the second half a
struggling Ajax team was hardly stronger than Twente. The
hosts' only danger came, quite remarkably, from corner
kicks. Ajax's corner kicks are oft criticized: they are usually
poorly taken and utterly ineffective. Today, however, both
Julien Escudé and Yannis Anastasiou were close to
pushing Ajax's second one against the net from corner
kicks.
While the quality of Ajax's play
dropped to a questionable level a remarkable substitution took
place: Hatem Trabelsi returned to the team. The
Tunisian left Amsterdam injured, but returned as champion of Africa. He returned to Ajax-1 action
in the 61st minute, replacing Zdenek Grygera. Ajax could (and
should) have decided the game a few minutes later, from the
only truly fluent Ajax attack of the day: Maxwell's fine cross
from the left was intelligently left untouched by Victor
Sikora, so that Yannis Anastasiou had the perfect
scoring chance from close range. The Greek, however, fired
too wildly and saw the ball slam against the cross-bar.
It was Anastasiou's very last touch
of the game. Only seconds later he was replaced by Wesley
Sonck, who also was unlucky: his header (on yet another fine
Sneijder corner!) seemed unstoppable for Paauwe, but was
cleared off the goal-line by Jeroen Heubach, who guarded the
post. The fact that Ajax did not play its finest football made
the second half attractive and - towards the end - rather
exciting, albeit much against Ajax's will. Twente was the
dominant side in the final minutes of the game and the
Reds once again came close to equalizing, as substitute Sjaak
Polak's breath-taking shot hit the woodwork at the
spot where cross-bar and post meet.
"The opponent took more risk towards
the end", was Koeman's post-game analysis. "We were effectively
overrun in midfield and we had to hold our breath until the
end. A draw was in it for Twente (...) We had to
win, because we wanted to extend our lead in the league.
And we did, but not in the way we were hoping for."
Coach and team are supposed to live
by the week: every game's a new challenge. It's not up to
them to draw the slightly painful conclusion that good
games have been a remarkably rare thing for Ajax this
season. The team has struggled far more frequently than it has
excelled. The last two matches in particular were miserable,
which is not a very promising fact for Wednesday, as Ajax
travels to the northern town of Heerenveen, from which both
Feyenoord (1-0) and PSV (3-2) returned empty-handed.
To Ajax's credit, however, it must be
said that the team is solid and very hard to beat. The
gap between Ajax and PSV may now be described as
enormous. If PSV wants to win the championship they
can only hope that Ajax will lose more points in the
remaining 13 games (nine, at least) than they lost in
the 21 games played so far (eight). If the Amsterdammers
survive the upcoming, traditionally tough away fixtures at
Heerenveen (Wednesday) and Utrecht (Sunday),
you'd say that it's safe for the KNVB to
already have the name 'AFC AJAX' engraved in the 2004
championship shield... (MP)
GOAL
Referee: Temmink
Yellow cards: Cziommer, Van der Weerden (FC
Twente)
Attendance: 48,979
Ajax line-up: Stekelenburg; Grygera (61.
Trabelsi), Heitinga, Escudé, Maxwell; De Jong,
Galásek, Sneijder; De Ridder, Anastasiou (69. Sonck),
Sikora (81. Mitea).
FC Twente line-up: Paauwe; Van der
Weerden, Pothuizen, Heubach, Ouedraogo; Sibum, Niemeyer, Ramzi
(77. Christensen), Gakhokidze (77. Polak); Cziommer,
N'Kufo.
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