Heerenveen exploit weak Ajax: 2-1
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Holland Casino Eredivisie
Abe Lenstra Stadium, Heerenveen
Saturday, 02 April, 2005
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"We can forget about the Champions League now," was
Danny Blind's conclusion after Ajax's fifth defeat of the
season and (painfully) the second consecutive loss for the new
Ajax head-coach himself. Two weeks after the historic 0-4
stuffing by PSV, Heerenveen substitute Georgios
Samaras gave the Amsterdammers the knock-out punch in the
88th minute at the Abe Lenstra Stadium on Saturday:
2-1. On Sunday, Feyenoord beat AZ 4-2, so that Ajax did
not only waste an opportunity to close in on AZ, but were also
leapfrogged by their Rotterdam arch-enemies, who now have the
same number of points but a much better goal-differential. Ajax
are fourth. Yes, it was a very bad weekend indeed...
Danny Blind's first weeks as the new Ajax boss have
been frustrating. He became the new captain on the ship at
the start of a series of extremely tough league games: PSV
at home, Heerenveen away, AZ at home and Feyenoord away,
all in one month's time. After his traumatic début
game on the Ajax-1 bench the large part of the Ajax
squad left Amsterdam to play World Cup
qualifiers with their national teams. Blind hardly had the
opportunity to talk to his players this week,
or to do some serious work in training. The
first time he had his full squad to his availability on
the training pitch was on Friday, one day before 'Heerenveen
away', a fixture that Ajax lost by 5-1 three years ago and by
4-1 last season. On top of it all, Blind was forced to
improvise. Two of his key midfielders were missing: Wesley
Sneijder due to a one game suspension and Rafaël van der
Vaart due to a hamstring injury.
Danny Blind and Gerard van der
Lem can only watch and worry. [Photo: Ajax.nl]
It must be said that Heerenveen coach also had his problems:
he missed his star midfielder (Mika Väyrynen) due to a
suspension and starters such as Arnold Bruggink, Arek Radomski
and Tomas Rzasa due to injury. At the Abe Lenstra Stadium (a
ground that grows larger every season and now holds 21,000
spectators) both coaches played a midfield line of
unusual composition.
It was possibly one of the reasons why both teams started so
amazingly poorly (especially Ajax). They constantly lost the
ball after two or three passes and completely failed to put
their strikers in scoring position (did Heerenveen's Klaas-Jan
Huntelaar and Ajax's Angelos Charisteas even touch the
ball in the opening phase...?). Charisteas had the only major
scoring chance of the first half hour: he was as free
as a bird, right in front of goal, on Mauro Rosales' 28th
minute cross, but completely missed it and hit
nothing but air.
What the game needed was a goal out of nowhere -
and Ajax were the team to score it. The cross from the
right was once again from Mauro Rosales;
the gentle touch that made it land against
the far side netting was from Charisteas: 0-1 (35').
Ironically, Rosales and Charisteas were possibly the two very
weakest Ajacieden in the first half. The remaining
ten minutes of the first half were the only phase in which Ajax
showed some football of more or less acceptable quality and
pace. Steven Pienaar even had the chance to double the score,
but his header on Rosales' 41st minute cross was too soft.
Ajax's goalkeeper was never seriously tested in
the first half. That goalkeeper was, by the way,
former Heerenveen goalie Hans Vonk, who surprisingly
returned to the starting line-up. On the bench was Maarten
Stekelenburg. Bogdan Lobont, a starter in recent
weeks, was on the stands. Rumor has it that the Romanian will
leave Ajax at season's end.
In spite of the fact that Ajax's play was absolutely
dreadful, the Amsterdammers had almost nothing to fear from
Heerenveen for a full hour. The hosts were
solid, but almost never threatening. Their topscorer,
Klaas-Jan Huntelaar, struggled against Julien Escudé and
Johnny Heitinga, while their midfielders seemed to have
little offensive ambitions. Lasse Nilsson's 49th minute
screamer from some outside of the penalty box (inches wide of
the far post) was more dangerous and exciting than any
Heerenveen attempt in the first half.
Heerenveen vs Ajax was, indeed, a poor game of football with
very little excitement in front of the goals. Just
like Ajax's opening goal Heerenveen's equalizer came out
of nowhere: the Ajax defense failed to clear Ugur Yildirim's
corner, allowing defender and 'Man Of The Match' Marcel Seip to
tap home from close range: 1-1 (63').
In the remaining 27 minutes of regulation Heerenveen took
the initiative as Ajax became weaker and weaker. Not a single
Ajacied is in great form at the moment, but
some (including Mauro Rosales, Maxwell and substitute
Nicolae Mitea) are in such a terrible form-crisis
that they hardly do anything right at the moment.
Heerenveen increased the pressure, without creating many
serious scoring opportunities. In fact, the best
chance of the second half was actually for Ajax,
namely Ryan Babel's face-to-face encounter with Vandenbussche
in the 81st minute.
Maxwell, after the final whistle.
[Photo: Ajax.nl]
The decisive moment arrived in the 88th minute, just when
everyone at Abel Lenstra Stadium seemed to have accepted 1-1 as
the final score of a dull confrontation between two teams that
were simply too powerless upfront. The key figures were
three substitutes: substitute #1 (Ajax's Daniël
de Ridder) easily intercepted André Hanssen's corner
kick, but indecisively and clumsily screwed about
with the ball on the edge of the penalty box instead of
whacking it away. Substitute #2 (Heerenveen's Ajax loanee
Victor Sikora) stole it from De Ridder's boot and offered
substitute #3 (Georgios Samaras) the perfect chance to make it
2-1 to Heerenveen. And he did.
Ajax energetically stormed forward in the minutes that
remained (and actually came close to equalizing as John
Heitinga's header hit the post), but simply lacked the ideas,
the conviction and the determination to lay claim to a better
result.
Danny Blind, after the game: "We try to book results
and work towards a bigger goal at the same
time. We try to make those two things go together, but that
won't always work. I want to change things at Ajax. And
change causes unrest. We have to qualify for the UEFA Cup as
soon as possible and take it from there, working on the
improvement of the team. Ajax have been lurching along for too
long. We must choose a direction now. That will cost time
and points. PSV at home and Heerenveen away are
two fixtures in which you reasonably can lose points.
And I can already tell you that the same thing goes
for two of the upcoming matches: AZ and Feyenoord."
The next game, however, is the Eredivisie home game against
Willem II on Thursday night. For that game Wesley Sneijder
will be available again, but Blind will have to miss out
on Julien Escudé (who picked up his fourth yellow
card of the season in Heerenveen and will be suspended for one
game) and, almost certainly, Angelos Charisteas. The
Greek sustained an ankle injury when Heerenveen equalized
and aims for next weekend's match against AZ. Indeed,
Ajax's problems seem to be getting bigger by the week...
(MP)
GOALS
- 35' 0-1 Angelos Charisteas
- 63' 1-1 Marcel Seip
- 88' 2-1 Georgios Samaras
Referee: Jol
Yellow cards: Escudé
(Ajax)
Attendance: 21,000
Ajax line-up: Vonk; Trabelsi, Heitinga,
Escudé, Maxwell; Pienaar (72. De Jong), Maduro,
Lindgren; Rosales (80. De Ridder), Charisteas (65. Mitea),
Babel.
SC Heerenveen line-up: Vandenbussche;
Bakkati, Hansson, Seip, Drost; Hansen, Breuer, Hestad; Yildirim
(85. Rose), Huntelaar (69. Samaras), Nilsson (79. Sikora).
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