On Monday afternoon, Ajax was linked to Benfica during the draw for the eighth finals of the Champions League. The team from Amsterdam was initially linked to Internazionale, but saw how the draw had to be over due to a technical problem. A diptych with Benfica means, among other things, a reunion with Jan Vertonghen. The defender played for Ajax between 2003 and 2012 and now wears the shirt of the club from Lisbon.
With Benfica, Ajax does not exactly meet a club where there is serenity. Despite the fact that the Portuguese superpower managed to hibernate at the expense of Barcelona in the billion-dollar ball, the position of trainer Jorge Jesus is under discussion. The team from Amsterdam will play at home on February 23 and will visit Portugal on March 15. “It is certainly not a team that you should underestimate”, Daley Blind looks ahead to the meeting with Befinca on the Ajax website. “What struck me in 2018 was that they played technical and neat football from the back with a number of very fast wingers. It will be difficult, but of course there are opportunities.”
Ajax last met Benfica in the Champions League in the 2018/19 season, when both teams were placed in the same group. In Amsterdam, Noussair Mazraoui won in the final minute. Two weeks later, Erik ten Hag’s team was stuck at a 1-1 draw. “Then we had a really hard time, especially in the away game in Lisbon”, Blind continues. “This season they were in a very tough group with Bayern Munich and Barcelona, so that they are through that says something.” Benfica finished second behind Bayern and thus sentenced Barcelona to a sequel in the Europa League.
At Ajax opponent Benfica, the supporters try to click away the trainer
Voetbalzone made a profile of Ajax’s Portuguese opponent in the eighth finals of the Champions League.
The duel with Benfica also means a reunion with Jan Vertonghen. The Belgian defender went through Ajax’s youth academy and became national champion twice with the team from Amsterdam, before making the switch to Tottenham Hotspur in 2012. Blind has already made the first contact with his former teammate. “That was fun,” says the Ajax player. “We immediately texted that we thought it was nice to meet again. That is something to look forward to. What we have achieved in the group stage no longer counts. We have to be at our best again to get through a round. “
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