Pienaar goal enough for bleak win over FC Zwolle
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Holland Casino Eredivisie
Amsterdam Arena, Amsterdam
Sunday, 31 August, 2003
Ronald Koeman's orders prior to the Eredivisie home game
against FC Zwolle were simple: 'Winning and showing better
football'. Ajax succeeded in the first, but - after a fairly
good first half hour - once again miserably failed in the
latter. In fact, today's second half was probably Ajax's
weakest so far. Any opponent with just a tad more belief in its
own ability would have notched a point from the ArenA. Against
FC Zwolle, however, a Steven Pienaar goal was enough for a
gray, utterly uninspired win: 1-0.
"It was substandard again", was Koeman's brief analysis
after the game. It was an understatement. In fact, the bleak
parody of a football game that was Ajax vs FC Zwolle was the
Dutch Eredivisie at its most stultifying: a high quality top
side struggling hardly able to keep itself awake, against a
relegation candidate (Zwolle didn't claim a single point so far
and didn't even produce a goal yet) that could have easily
stolen a victory from the ArenA by entering the pitch armed to
the teeth, fully aware of its chances.
Tomás Galásek
slides in. [Photo: Gerard van Hees/Ajax.nl]
FC Zwolle, however, was so typically Dutch it would drive
the average football fan crazy: the side of former Ajax
coach-assistant Peter Boeve played pretty well and showed fine
combination play throughout, but was utterly harmless upfront
and never seemed to seriously believe in an upset. Their
determiniation melted away once the team came close to Ajax's
penalty area, there was no desperate all-or-nothing offensive
in the final minutes and not a single merciless foul in
an attempt to set the game on fire. For some reason Boeve was
proud of his team's performance after the game. How naive. Any
British lower division side would have eaten Ajax alive today,
or at least have created major unrest in the Ajax defense.
Aggression is an underrated quality in football in general -
and Dutch football in particular.
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"Thank you,
Sjakie!"
The highlight of the
day followed immediately after the game, as
Ajax said goodbye to its equipment manager
and jack-of-all-trades: Sjaak Wolfs, who officially worked for Ajax
from 1975 to 2003, after years of 'unofficial' service.
Ajax greats such as Rinus Michels, Danny Blind, Rob de
Wit, Arnold Mühren and Bobby Haarms were there to
thank him. Sjakie entered the ArenA pitch holding
the hands of two F-Side supporters, Mirjam and
Joark.
There were speeches and gifts
for the immortal fan mascot, who made his lap of honour
around the pitch on a mini-car, to end up on a wooden
bench directly in front of the F-Side. During the
F-Side's moving hommage Sjakie was joined by the entire
Ajax-1 squad. The man himself took the microphone very
briefly, saying with breaking voice: "Fantastic people.
Fantastic people. Fantastic people. Be sure to keep it
like that."
Sjakie Wolfs was assigned a
special 'seat of honour' on the main stand of the
ArenA, from which he will watch his Ajax play from now
on. (MP)
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Quite ironically, FC Zwolle never came as close to scoring as
in the 15th minute, as Petri Pasanen accidentally slammed the
ball against his own cross-bar. Otherwise, there were a few
harmless attempts with the head by Bulgarian striker Hristov
and one real chance for Jasar Takak in the 79th minute. Well,
'real chance'? Ajax managed to deal with the situation in a
'fair play way': Maxwell came to rescue in the nick of time,
just as Takak was going to pull the trigger.
Otherwise the meandering Amsterdammers could afford to
sleepwalk for an hour. No pace, no ideas. It says a lot about
the true weakness of the opposition that Ajax had its scoring
chances in spite of it all.
It must be said, however, that Ajax's start was rather
promising. At least the team seemed determined in the opening
phase, in which Zdenek Grygera showed his best play for Ajax so
far. The energetic first 30 minutes culminated in the gracious
opening goal. A long ball from the back was flicked on with the
heel by Rafaël van der Vaart and with the head by Zlatan
Ibrahimovic, before Steven Pienaar push it past goalkeeper Van
der Werff (32').
The crowd's hopes that the Ajax engine was finally starting
to run properly, however, turned out to be in vain. Two of
Ajax's best in the opening phase were Zdenek Grygera and Zlatan
Ibrahimovic, but the Amsterdammers 'lost' both of those
players: Grygera collided head-to-head with Zwolle's Ivan
Cvetkov and had to be replaced. Diagnosis in hospital: a
concussion of yet unknown seriousness. Ibrahimovic, meanwhile,
also 'disappeared' from the game, albeit not physically but
mentally. In the second half the Swede looked as slow and
clumsy as in his first Ajax year.
It led to a couple of highly remarkable substitutions by
Koeman, who took off both Ibrahimovic and - it had to happen
one day - Rafaël van der Vaart, who is playing against
himself so far this season. The captain's armband around his
arm seems to weigh 200 pounds. Van der Vaart passed it on to
last Wednesday's Champions League hero, Tomás
Galásek. Even he could not make the difference
today.
Once again, the only positive exception was Julien
Escudé, who once again showed that any suggestion that
Ajax misses Cristian Chivu is plain ignorance. Escudé's
replacing of the Romanian is the only positive Ajax news so
far. Plus, of course, the results. Ajax played five games so
far, all against mediocre opposition and without convincing a
single time. Nevertheless, Ajax somehow won the jackpot:
admission to the Champions League and a 100% score in the
Eredivisie. It's flabbergasting when you think about it.
The only other team to have won all of its games (and
without conceding a single goal) is RKC Waalwijk. This fact
makes Ajax's next Eredivisie match, at home against RKC
on 13 September, a top fixture in which the top slot on
the table is directly at stake. Three days later AC Milan
awaits Ajax in San Siro. If the Ajax players don't pick up some
form very soon (in this week's Euro 2004 qualifiers, for
example) the first truly traumatic games of the season may well
be coming up next. (MP)
GOALS:
Referee: Luijten
Yellow cards: Galásek (Ajax),
Yobo (FC Zwolle)
Attendance: 37,086
Ajax line-up: Lobont; Grygera (43. De
Jong), Pasanen, Escudé, Maxwell; Galásek, Van der
Vaart (62. Sonck), Sneijder; Pienaar, Ibrahimovic (71. Sikora),
Soetaers.
FC Zwolle line-up: Van der Werff;
Ravensbergen, Yobo, Van der Haar, Parnela (80. Snippe);
Karlsen, Takak, Van Dinteren (86. Lim-Duan); Hristov,
Cvetkov, Bosschaart (64. De Ridder).
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