Valentijn Driessen aims his arrows again at Sébastien Haller after Ajax’s draw against Go Ahead Eagles (0-0). The chief of football of The Telegraph He previously said the striker is “not Champions League worthy”, a statement frequently referred to after Haller scored four times in the 1-5 win against Sporting Portugal. Driessen believes that Haller – good for fourteen goals in seventeen appearances this season – should make the difference for Ajax in matches such as the one against Go Ahead.
“Ajax that draws twice in a row is simply unprecedented,” Driessen begins in a video from The Telegraph. “With attackers like Tadic, Haller, Antony, Neres: explain it. I said at the beginning of the season that Haller is not Champions League worthy. He has shown that he can score in the Champions League, but he often omits it in the Eredivisie. He has to make the difference in these kinds of matches. He does depend on what he gets, but against Go Ahead he got two chances that you think: he would have liked it.”
“Ajax should of course be deeply ashamed of such a result,” Driessen continues. “Then you can point to 37 goals for, 2 against and still 9 loss points, but you can’t hide behind that. You can blame yourself for letting it get this far. You are simply on par with PSV, which you previously rolled up in-house. Feyenoord is even above you if they win the make-up match (against Heracles Almelo, ed.).”
Nevertheless, Driessen thinks that Ajax will become champion. “It may remain exciting until the winter, you still have Feyenoord – Ajax in December. This is of course nice for the competition, but I think that Ajax will walk away in February, March or April,” says the football chief of The Telegraph. He calls the fact that Ajax is now losing points ‘much more of a mental issue than a quality issue’. “That’s what a trainer and his staff are for, to sharpen things up so that you also beat Heracles and Go Ahead.”