Disaster... No Champions League for Ajax after 0-2 stumble
1 (0) - 2 (1)
UEFA Champions League, 3rd Preliminary Round
Amsterdam ArenA, Amsterdam
Wednesday, 23 August, 2006
The unbelievable has happened: Ajax have squandered their 1-2 lead from the first leg against FC København. On their own soil: the Amsterdam ArenA. The Danes scored twice while remaining upright in defense, storming to a 3-2 win on aggregate. Ajax's worst nightmare has come true: they will not be in the Champions League this season, but in the less prestigious and much less lucrative UEFA Cup. It will cost the club at least 10 million euros, plus another slice from their historic reputation. The first devastating setback under head-coach Henk ten Cate is a fact. Wednesday 23 August 2006 was a bad, bad day for Ajax. "This is a heavy blow," said Ten Cate. "We will have to move on," added captain Jaap Stam.
So, what in the world went wrong with the Ajax boys, who seemed to be on their way to the group stage of the Champions League after their (rather fortunate) 1-2 win at Parken, a fortnight ago? Ten Cate, his players and the 35,000 at the ArenA were too shell-shocked for a proper analysis when referee Fandel blew his whistle and the Danish party on the pitch started.
Huntelaar was only one of the Ajacieden who
could have scored in the first half. [Photo: Ajax.nl]
Unlike last season (when Brøndby IF tortured Ajax in the first half at the ArenA and were 0-1 up at half-time) the Amsterdammers had a truly convincing first half. They knocked the ball around with confidence and accuracy, looked solid at the back and even more so in midfield (where Gabri performed wonderfully well), didn't allow the opponent a single scoring chance or even a dangerous counter-attack and created a hatful of scoring chances. How many...? Four, at least. Maybe five or six. Ajax should have wrapped it all up in the first 45 minutes. They could (and should) have reduced the second half to a formality, for the simple reason that they were the better football team by a mile. But they failed to do so - and eventually paid the price for it.
An Ajax goal seemed a matter of time in the first half. In the 8th minute, Ryan Babel dribbled towards the FCK penalty area and released a shot that took a deflection off Jacobsen, bowed over goalkeeper Christiansen and hit the far post. The rebound was for Mauro Rosales. He hammered the ball over the cross-bar. Gabri had two excellent scoring chances, but he missed his target both times, once with his head and once with his right foot. Ryan Babel's fine shot was tipped over the cross-bar by Christiansen in the 36th minute. And in the 39th minute everybody at the ArenA thought that Jaap Stam's screamer was going to hit the back of the net. It didn't: it took a deflection off a Danish leg and went just wide. Indeed: it should have been 1-0 at least after 45 minutes of football. But no-one at the ArenA seemed worried: Ajax were playing well, they clearly didn't underestimate their opponent and were not going to blow it. Sure thing.
Gabri has a major scoring chance... but nods it wide. [Photo: Ajax.nl]
Fifteen minutes later, when referee Fandel set the second half in motion, it all started to go wrong. Gabri - superb in the first half - seemed to have a slightly different (more defensive) task and slowly but certainly lost it. Ryan Babel and Hedwiges Maduro started to drift out of the game. The young defenders next to Jaap Stam suddenly seemed nervous. The Danish visitors seemed incapable of taking advantage, but Ajax were slowly losing the plot. "Ajax were getting insecure," FCK boss Ståle Solbakken said after the game. "They were getting a bit shaky. After an hour they were only kicking long balls forward, straight at our tall defenders.
The turning point was the 59th minute of the game, in which Tobias Linderoth's free-kick from the left landed at the far post, where Michael Silberbauer tapped home, totally unmarked: 0-1. It was the first chance of the game for FCK, and of course it came from a set piece. Ten Cate had warned his troops for those. Many times.
From that moment on it was painfully obvious that Ajax were going to be unable to turn the game around. In fact: they started to fall apart and it was going fast. The almost tangible fear of the 35,000 Ajax supporters and the players on the pitch turned into despair when Urby Emanuelson clumsily lost the ball to Kvist, whose low cross was tapped into his own net by a sliding Thomas Vermaelen: 0-2 (77') and Ajax were on their way out. Oh, the misery... FCK created half a chance in 80 minutes of football, but somehow scored twice...
Jaap Stam comforts the unfortunate Thomas Vermaelen. [Photo: Ajax.nl]
Ten Cate brought on Kenneth Perez, and later Markus Rosenberg, in a desperate attempt to score the goal Ajax now required to at least secure 30 minutes of extra time. Klaas-Jan Huntelaar almost scored it in the 80th minute, when goalkeeper Christiansen missed a high cross. Huntelaar's header bounced back from the cross-bar, launching an FCK counter-attack that would lead to the visitors' first (and only) real scoring opportunity of the match: Michael Silberbauer rushed past several Ajax defenders and came face-to-face with Maarten Stekelenburg, but decided to take a dive. His reward wasn't a penalty, but a yellow card. Four minutes later Ajax's devastating elimination was a fact, and all that remained was a painful feeling of déja vu...
"The Champions League would have been such an important stage for our young players," mourned Henk ten Cate. "We were heavily punished for a couple of mistakes Urby Emanuelson made tonight. And then Thomas Vermaelen hits a ball unluckily. I didn't expect this for a single second. We were convinced we were on-form for this. We should have scored the goal. We had the chances: a clearance off the line, the cross-bar... Gabri alone had three chances, and he should have converted one of them. They had no chances at all this evening. Even their goals were scored from situations that were hardly chances."
The stumble against FC København was totally and utterly unnecessary indeed, but in all honesty it must be said that FCK won in Amsterdam the way Ajax won in Copenhagen: by making the absolute most out of a very limited number of chances. The bottom-line is that Ajax did not do the business when it mattered most. UEFA Cup it is. Draw on Friday. Ouch. (MP)
GOALS
- 59' 0-1 Michael Silberbauer
- 77' 0-2 Thomas Vermaelen (own goal)
Referee: Fandel (Germany)
Yellow cards: Stam, Sneijder (Ajax), Allbäck, Silberbauer (FC København).
Attendance: 35,617
Ajax line-up: Stekelenburg; Heitinga, Stam, Vermaelen, Emanuelson; Gabri (79. Perez), Maduro (59. Vertonghen), Sneijder; Rosales (85. Rosenberg), Huntelaar, Babel.
FC København line-up: Christiansen; Jacobsen, Gravgaard, Hangeland, Bergdølmo; Linderoth, Silberbauer (89. Thomassen), Hutchinson, Kvist; Allbäck, Pimpong (57. Berglund).
Ajax eliminated and go into the UEFA Cup
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