Ajax will start the group stage of the Champions League against Sporting Portugal on Wednesday evening. It is a duel that Mees de Wit will follow with above average interest. The player from PEC Zwolle played for both clubs. In 2018, the now 23-year-old left back left Ajax for a chance in Lisbon. Looking ahead to Wednesday evening’s game, De Wit does not know which team to put his money on. He sees it as a great advantage for the team from Amsterdam that the Uruguayan Sebastián Coates has been suspended. “A beast, so that’s really nice for Ajax.”
De Wit was allowed to train regularly with the main force at Sporting. “I saw how the players wanted to fight more and more for each other,” he says in the General Newspaper. “That was on the one hand, but on the other hand they also had the individual qualities to show beautiful football. Portuguese are very crafty. We know in the Netherlands how annoying they can be. This Sporting also does everything to win. But it is also a technical team with experience.”
Besides Coates, Sporting also has to miss Pedro Goncalves against Ajax. The 23-year-old Portuguese attacker is struggling with an injury. “A striker who scores almost every game, while sometimes you don’t even see him. He may well be the next to make a top transfer,” continues De Wit, who had to deal with Nuno Mendes as a competitor in Portugal. for seven million euros on a rental basis, with a purchase option of forty million euros included in the lease.
Sporting trains talents and also often brings young players to Lisbon to further develop them. “Sporting is looking for a bit of a balance in that,” said De Wit, who played in the Ajax youth from 2014 to 2018. “The club likes to train and tries to prepare a few boys every year, but also brings in a lot of young players in the hope that they can break through and be sold quickly and well. In terms of training and facilities, I therefore rate Ajax slightly higher.”
De Wit indicates that he would not know which club to put his money on if Sporting and Ajax meet on Wednesday evening. “What might be to Ajax’s advantage is that Sporting’s players have less European experience. However, it is true that they now also want to prove themselves to the Portuguese public, because Sporting has shown little in Europe in recent years.”