Ajax will play against Young Boys in the eighth final of the Europa League, as the draw in Nyon showed on Friday afternoon. The team from Amsterdam start the double confrontation against the Swiss with a home game. The games will be played on Thursday March 11th and 18th.
The meeting with the Swiss will be a reunion for Ajax with Miralem Sulejmani. The 32-year-old attacker was brought in by the Amsterdammers in 2008 for 16.25 million euros as a record purchase. After five unsuccessful years, Sulejmani left for Benfica transfer-free, to join Young Boys two years later. With the Swiss, the Serbian is considered a regular basic player. By the way, Young Boys, which dealt with Peter Bosz’s Bayer Leverkusen in the previous round, plays its home games in the Wankdorf Stadium on artificial turf.
Ajax has played against Young Boys once before in history. In the 1987/88 season, a double confrontation against the Swiss followed in the quarter finals of the European Cup 2. At the time, Ajax won both the home and away game 1-0. The last time Young Boys played against a Dutch club was in the 2019/20 season. Feyenoord went down 2-0 in the group stage at Young Boys and played a draw in De Kuip (1-1).
There were no seeded and unseeded clubs in that draw. Clubs from the same country could meet for the first time. Ajax could draw all fifteen remaining teams. The other options for the team of coach Erik ten Hag were Tottenham Hotspur, Granada, Shakhtar Donetsk, Rangers, Arsenal, Molde, Villarreal, AC Milan, AS Roma, Dynamo Kiev, Dinamo Zagreb, Slavia Prague, Manchester United and Olympiacos.
Ajax settled with Lille in the eighth final on Thursday evening. After the team from Amsterdam had won the game 1-2 last week, it became 2-1 in the Johan Cruijff ArenA. The team of trainer Erik ten Hag quickly took the lead thanks to a quick hit by Davy Klaassen, but made it difficult for itself when Yusuf Yazici was able to equalize with a penalty in the second half. David Neres took care of the liberating winning goal in the 88th minute.
Full draw for the eighth final Europa League 2020/21:
Ajax (Ned) – Young Boys (Zwi)
Dynamo Kiev (Uk) – Villarreal (Spa)
AS Roma (Ita) – Shakthar Donetsk (Uk)
Olympiacos (Gri) – Arsenal (Eng)
Dinamo Zagreb (Kro) – Tottenham Hotspur (Eng)
Manchester United (Eng) – AC Milan (Ita)
Slavia Prague (Ch) – Rangers (Sco)
Granada (Spa) – Molde FK (Nor)