Painful Ajax knock-out in Heerenveen snowstorm: 4-2
4 (2) - 2 (0)
Eredivisie
Abe Lenstra Stadium, Heerenveen
Friday, 30 December, 2005
Every Dutch football fan asked himself only
one question prior to Heerenveen vs Ajax:
will 'The Hunter' play one last game for Heerenveen,
only 28 hours before officially
becoming an Ajacied? Or will his coach, Gert-Jan
Verbeek, 'protect' his top goalscorer on a
potentially awkward evening...?
We knew the answer at 20:00, while a severe snowstorm
raged over Abe Lenstra Stadium. Klaas Jan Huntelaar played.
From the start. And he scored, too. Against Ajax.
Heerenveen, by the way, would not even have needed Huntelaar's
goal for their fourth comfortable home triumph over Ajax
in five seasons. The hapless Amsterdammers went 4-0
down (it was the third time since 2001 for Ajax
to concede four goals or more in Heerenveen). It may
be clear that their late brace of goals did not
bring any consolation...
Heerenveen did much better than
their guests in
dealing with the winter conditions. [Photo:
Ajax.nl]
December 2005 was a near perfect month for Ajax.
Near perfect. The Amsterdammers won four
Eredivisie games in a row, leapfrogged five clubs (climbing
from 9th to 4th) and closed in considerably on PSV,
Feyenoord and AZ. The gap between Ajax and the
top of the table was 14 points in late November, but a win
in Heerenveen would have made it 9. It wasn't to be.
The fine month of December ended with a painful
K.O. in a match that - in many ways - summed up the
whole year 2005 for Ajax. Ajax's advance has been brought
to a standstill. PSV are 12 points clear again,
while the gap with Feyenoord and AZ is 8 (if AZ win
the game they still have in hand).
Okay: perhaps referee Wiedemeijer should have called the
game off. There was a thick layer of snow on the pitch, the
stands were lashed by a snowstorm and visibility was quite
poor. While most train services in the northern The
Netherlands were cancelled, Heerenveen and Ajax played an
Eredivisie football game in extreme conditions. "I know it
sounds a bit weak now that we have lost," said Danny Blind
after the game, "but I seriously believe
that this game should not have been played."
His Heerenveen colleague, Gert-Jan Verbeek, did not
disagree, but was more pragmatic about it: "Fact is that
the game was played. In that case you just have
to adapt to the circumstances. A football team should be
capable of doing that."
These comments by the two head-coaches are the match in a
nutshell. Heerenveen vs Ajax was an encounter
between an Ajax team that was utterly incapable of adapting to
the conditions, and a home side that played aggressively
and opportunistically, intelligently avoiding King
Winter's tackles. Moreover, it seemed like Heerenveen
simply wanted it more. Their victory was well
deserved. In fact, you might wonder if Ajax even deserved their
two late goals, as the Amsterdammers failed to create
a serious scoring chance until the 79th minute.
Flowing combination play was almost impossible in Heerenveen
and scoring chances were very rare. Ajax's didn't create any at
all; Heerenveen didn't get many, either. The difference:
Ajax's strikers (Rosenberg and Charisteas) were cluelessly
racing around in the snow, whereas those of Heerenveen (Samaras
and Huntelaar) knew when the business needed to be done,
namely... on set pieces.
Two corner kicks in the latter 15 minutes before the
break were the key to the Frisian victory. The hosts have
a specialist in their ranks: Ugur Yildirim. His 35th
minute corner landed in the Ajax goalmouth like a scud
missile. Defender Petter Hansson hammered it against the
underside of the cross-bar, after which the reaction of Greek
striker Georgios Samaras was more resolute than that
of the Ajax defenders: 1-0 (35'). Only three minutes later,
once again on a Yildirim corner, the Ajax
defenders found out that their new team-mate is
very strong in the air on corner kicks: 2-0 (38'). Three
of Ajax's best players in recent games (goalkeeper Stekelenburg
and central defenders Heitinga and Vermaelen) blatantly
miscalculated when Yildirim's projectiles screeched by.
Vermaelen's consolation goal
hardly mattered. [Photo: Ajax.nl]
Ajax crashed with their faces into the snow, and were unable
to resurrect themselves. There were a few shooting attempts
(Sneijder, De Jong) and the odd sudden chance from close range
(Rosenberg), but Ajax were never more dangerous than the hosts,
who decided the game in the 67th minute (a well aimed, low shot
by André Hanssen) and seemed on their way to
a historic result when Samaras nodded another Yildirim
corner into the netting (76'). In between Heerenveen's
third and fourth goals, by the way, a Charisteas goal was
disallowed for mysterious reasons. Not that it would
have made any difference.
Ajax netted twice in the dying minutes, but we would
give them too much credit by saying that they 'fought back'.
Vermaelen's close range tap-in on a Sneijder free-kick
(79') was hardly the result of Ajax determination and
Tomás Galásek's last minute penalty was too
little, too late. Charisteas was mowed down by former
Feyenoord man Paul Bosvelt, who got into a brief row with
Juanfran when the first refused to give Ajax the
ball. Referee Wiedemeijer restored the order by showing
his yellow card three times: once to Juanfran and twice to
Bosvelt.
"Heerenveen's estimation of the conditions was simply
much better than ours," said Danny Blind after the game. A
remarkable statement from a man who decided to train
indoors the day before the game, because of the snow on the
training pitch... It will be hard for any Ajax supporter to
not be cynical about that. The
Ajacieden looked like ballerinas on the North Pole,
running around as if they had never seen snow or felt
frost before. They can think about what went wrong during
a very short winter break. Ajax go back in training on 08
January... with Klaas Jan Huntelaar. (MP)
GOALS
- 34' 1-0 Georgios Samaras
- 38' 2-0 Klaas Jan Huntelaar
- 67' 3-0 André Hanssen
- 76' 4-0 Georgios Samaras
- 79' 4-1 Thomas Vermaelen
- 90' 4-2 Tomás Galásek
(penalty)
Referee: Wiedemeijer
Yellow cards: Juanfran,
Sneijder (Ajax), Yildirim, Kissi (SC
Heerenveen)
Red card: Bosvelt (SC Heerenveen, 'double
yellow', 90')
Attendance: 21,000
Ajax line-up: Stekelenburg; Trabelsi
(58. Rosales), Heitinga, Vermaelen, Juanfran; De Jong,
Galásek, Sneijder, Emanuelson (70. Boukhari); Rosenberg,
Charisteas.
SC
Heerenveen line-up: Vandenbussche; Seip,
Hansson, Breuer (29. Derveld), Kissi; Bosvelt, Bruggink (56.
Hanssen), Pranjic; Yildirim, Huntelaar (85. Nilsson),
Samaras.
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