Saturday, August 14, 2021 at 10:48 PM• Jeroen van Poppel • Last update: 22:52

Ajax presented its business card to its own public on Saturday evening at the season overture in the Eredivisie. Erik ten Hag’s team started incredibly energetically against NEC and was leading 4-0 within twenty minutes. After that, Ajax seemed to slow down and so the visitors from Nijmegen eventually came off fairly mercifully: 5-0.

The first twenty minutes could be characterized as a complete whirlwind of Ajax on the goal of NEC. Sébastien Haller missed with left, while Jurriën Timber headed just past the far post. In the sixth minute it was still hit for Haller, who nicely extended a cross from Noussair Mazraoui: 1-0. Four minutes later, Dusan Tadic cut his opponent out to place the ball with the right on the head of Mazraoui: 2-0. The enormous pressure from Ajax led to an own goal by Bart van Rooij in the thirteenth minute, who unintentionally placed the ball behind goalkeeper Mattijs Branderhorst with his chest: 3-0.

New big opportunities soon followed for the home side, but Haller and Edson Álvarez were not focused. Tadic did have that and shot the ball impeccably into the corner after a corner by Steven Berghuis: 4-0. At that time, less than twenty minutes had been played and NEC must have feared the worst, but in the phase that followed, the pressure on the Nijmegen goal eased somewhat.

Seven minutes before the break, Ajax scored its fifth goal from the switch. Berghuis was sent deep by Davy Klaassen and put wide on Tadic, who remained extremely cool: 5-0. NEC complained that the goal was preceded by a foul by Noussair Mazraoui, but referee Bas Nijhuis and VAR Laurens Gerrets did not want that. Four minutes after the break, Berghuis created an imposed chance for Gravenberch, who shot for an open goal with a left wide.

After the huge opportunity for Gravenberch, hardly anything happened near either goal. Ten Hag decided to take Tadic to the side after an hour and Ajax seemed to believe it. Fifteen minutes before the end, Mazraoui saw a dangerous header go right past. In the final phase, NEC captain Lasse Schöne was taken to the side by Rogier Meijer to loud cheers from the Ajax supporters. Schöne, who played for Ajax between 2013 and 2019, had already been addressed before the match by director of football affairs Marc Overmars of the team from Amsterdam.