Ajax has written a divorce on Wednesday evening by being the first Dutch clubs to win all six group matches in the Champions League. The team of coach Erik ten Hag was 4-2 too strong for Sporting Portugal at home. There was also success for Sébastien Haller. The French Ivorian striker was responsible for the first goal from the dot and thus joined Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and Robert Lewandowski. For the striker, the hunt for records continues in the new calendar year.
Never before has a Dutch club managed to win all group matches in the Champions League. Ajax thus joins a list with clubs such as Paris Saint-Germain, Barcelona, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich. Liverpool also closed the group stage for the first time in club history with six victories. The victory over Sporting also marked the hundredth victory of a Dutch club in the billion-dollar ball. Ajax (56 victories), PSV (33 victories) and Feyenoord (9 victories) have the largest share in that special milestone.
The goal difference of the team from Amsterdam is also impressive. Ajax scored twenty times and conceded five goals. This makes Ajax the most accurate team of this campaign, although Bayern (19 goals) will still be in action on Wednesday evening. Only eight teams have managed to reach the 20-goal mark in the group stage of the Champions League in the past. There are two seasons in which Ajax scored even more often. In 1995/96 and 2018/19, the team from Amsterdam scored 22 times. With at least two more duels in the eighth finals ahead, it is very likely that that record will also be written off the books.
The fact that the Man of the Match award went to Steven Berghuis was somewhat striking, as Antony’s figures were a lot better. The winger was responsible for the second Amsterdam goal on the stroke of half-time and had the most shots (6) of all players on the field, the most ball touches in Sporting’s sixteen (7), the most successful dribbles (2) and the highest fit accuracy (97 percent). The Brazilian is working on an excellent Champions League campaign, although Ten Hag ruled out leaving in the winter in the run-up to the game with Sporting.
Someone who isn’t leaving this winter either is Haller. The striker scored his tenth goal of the campaign against Sporting and now leads the campaign alone. Robert Lewandowski, who is on nine hits, will take action on Wednesday. Haller is therefore not yet close to Jari Litmanen’s record as the most accurate play of a Dutch club (20 goals), but is now, together with Cristiano Ronaldo, the first player ever to score six group matches in all. The Portuguese did that in the 2017/18 season on behalf of Real Madrid.
Haller can call himself the player who needed the least number of games to reach ten goals in one Champions League season. Never has a player managed to reach his first ten goals faster in the billion-dollar (6 duels) ball. Haller now shares the record for most goals on behalf of a Dutch club in one season with Sören Lerby. The Dane was also accurate ten times in 1979/80, in the European Cup.