Kenneth Perez is not happy with Ajax’s defensive performance. The team from Amsterdam started the Europa League match with Olympique Marseille excellently with a 2-0 lead, but they were given away before the half-time signal: 2-2. Halfway through the match the analyst leaves the studio ESPN also know to be disappointed in Steven Berghuis.
“I haven’t seen them play as well as Ajax started this season,” Perez opens. “It’s nice that both teams thought: we are doing something for the public and neither are defending. It’s really unbelievable how they defend themselves. The audience was behind Ajax and the coaching staff seemed surprised at the goals, like: hey, what’s happening here!? I thought it was a good variation with Berghuis at 2-0. It is simply a very nice variant.”
“This was about the only thing Berghuis did well in this match,” Perez makes a comment. “He wants to have every ball, demands everything. He wants to act as a leader, but he loses the ball so much, so you have to constantly switch. He has a passing accuracy of sixty percent! So many ball losses!”
Ajax took the lead in the eighth minute. Carlos Forbs took advantage of a misunderstanding at the back at Marseille, where a long ball from Jay Gorter was poorly processed. Forbs headed the ball through to himself and, after a long rush, finished one-on-one with Pau López: 1-0. It became even better for Ajax when Steven Berghuis scored beautifully from a drop-kick in the twentieth minute after a passed cross from Borna Sosa: 2-0.
Ajax’s lead would not last long, as Jonathan Clauss scored three minutes later with a convincing diagonal shot towards the far corner: 2-1. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang made a kind of sliding tackle from sixteen meters seven minutes before half-time, when there was again a lot of space behind Ajax’s defense: 2-2.