Sébastien Haller becomes in The the Dutch Summer highlighted as discordant at Ajax. The 27-year-old striker suffered a lot of ball loss in the Johan Cruijff Scale against PSV (0-4 win) and in the eyes of René van der Gijp, Wim Kieft and Johan Derksen could not meet the expectations that come with his price tag of 22, 5 million euros. The conclusion at the table is that Haller will become dependent on the number of goals he will score at Ajax.
“That disallowed goal that Haller makes, that’s how he will have to make his goals,” Kieft refers to the Ivorian international’s tipper in the first half. The goal was disallowed for offside in the run-up to Dusan Tadic. “That he runs into them, that he is the end station. Because he was really disappointing when playing football. Why? Because he is simply not agile enough. That keeper (Remko Pasveer, ed.) consciously looks for the long ball at Haller. Then You have to hold him. You don’t even have to be a good football player for that. Then you just use your body and then you hold it, and then you put it down. He didn’t even win those duels. Then it becomes much more difficult to play football in the box. They are going to skip him. They are going to say to him: you have to make sure you head them in.”
Van der Gijp is also not impressed by Haller. “If you look at very good strikers, so of the caliber Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Wayne Rooney, Ruud van Nistelrooy, they actually have everything: they can score a goal, they can give a pass, they can pass it, they can put in a penalty. shoot, they have everything”, Van der Gijp knows. “But what’s underneath, they often have one specific thing that is very good. They can head very well, they are terrible on the moped, they can score a great goal or they can shield him. What does Haller have? He doesn’t have anything specifically, of which I say: god damn, say. He’s got it all a bit. He can head well, hold a ball well: a nice player. He is obliged to shoot 25 to 30 at Ajax, if you don’t have all the others.”
Derksen also found Haller disappointing and immediately draws a conclusion. “Ajax has taken him and he is useful in the Dutch competition, but at European level he is not of much use.” Kieft thinks that Ajax will play in Europe with Tadic in the striker and that Haller will then sit on the bench. The former striker knows what Haller has to do in Amsterdam. “If you now also have that Steven Berghuis, who also throws him in from the right … Then you also have Tadic, who by the way prepared a great one for Berghuis. Haller will get the opportunities, but he just has to make sure that He’s always there in the sixteen.”