With his first Eredivisie goal in the shirt of Ajax, Steven Berghuis also had a share in the monster victory of the team from Amsterdam at SC Cambuur (9-0) on Saturday evening. The attacker was again posted to the number 10 position by trainer Erik ten Hag and fulfilled that role properly. The Ajax trainer does not want to hear anything about criticisms against his pupil, as it turned out after the game in front of the cameras of ESPN.
“We can all take a critical look at a man who comes from Feyenoord and was looking for a match or three or four?” asks Hans Kraay Jr. Ten Hag afterwards. “He is going to use it better and better”, the coach parries the criticism. “I thought he was good from the start. Of course he has to get used to it, but he played well from the start. He may have played one bad game, at FC Twente. He has achieved a very acceptable level in all those other games, whether it be against NEC or for the Johan Cruijff Scale. He is good at it. That grows per game.”
Berghuis accounted for the second Amsterdam goal against Cambuur by hitting hard on the instructions of Dusan Tadic. “Of course he will grow as soon as you get used to your fellow players and a different way of playing,” Ten Hag emphasizes once again. “Then you will play better. At least, if the attitude is good. And that is the case with him. He is now in that process and I am happy with that. I have seen a good and hungry Ajax anyway. We have now continued in the second half, we have sometimes left that behind in other games.”
Ten Hag saw a Cambuur that offered considerable resistance in the first fifteen minutes of the match. However, after Jurriën Timber’s opening goal on the advice of Berghuis, the team from Amsterdam ended up with a monster victory. “Before the first goal, they certainly had the intention to make something of it,” continues the trainer. “To play football and become dangerous. They did an excellent job. It is not up to me to pass judgment on Cambuur, you can say that,” Ten Hag parries the question from Kraay Jr. whether he thought the Leeuwarders were naive.