Kenneth Perez does not have a good word for Daley Blind’s game in Saturday’s match between PEC Zwolle and Ajax (0-2). Despite the victory, the analyst found Ajax ‘abominably bad’ in Zwolle. “And he took the cake,” the analyst adds about Blind in the broadcast of This was the Weekend. “It was almost clownish.”
The broadcast shows a compilation of ‘easy’ passes that Blind was. “It’s as if he has thought: I’m going to play at thirty percent today, see if that works. I’m going to see how little effort I can show every time.” Perez makes it clear that he does not really believe that Blind thought that way: “But especially his passing, which he is always praised for, was so poor, so easygoing. He tries things with the approach: I’ll see if it works. The whole competition actually.”
The centre-back was by far the player with the most passes (112) and successful passes (98) on the field; he also had the most contact with the ball (123). However, Perez believes that Blind was not focused from the start and is in a downward spiral ‘in terms of passing’. “He’s out of shape and that can happen. There’s nothing wrong with that at all. You can’t be in shape all the time, there are very few players who can do that. You haven’t seen the Daley Blind for three, four, five games in a row. who sends good passes between the lines.”
The analyst is positive about another player. “I thought Ryan Gravenberch was really active and played well, apart from a free kick, he still needs practice on his kick,” says Perez, referring to a free kick by Gravenberch that sailed high in the nineteenth minute. a player who really tried to make something out of it.”