Ajax was 3-0 too strong for RKC Waalwijk on Sunday, who knew in advance that it would be a difficult job in the Johan Cruijff ArenA. Dusan Tadic and Zakaria Labyad scored in the first half and Lisandro Martínez threw the game seventeen minutes ahead of time. In the remainder of the second half there was sometimes talk of gallery play at Ajax; Mohamed Kudus in particular opted for a few artful heels.

That was too much of a good thing for RKC, although they tried to deal with it professionally. “It’s not up to me to find out about it now,” Fred Grim in conversation with FOX Sports. The coach of the Brabant club nevertheless gave his cautious opinion. “If that would have been my player, I wouldn’t have liked that.”

For the footballers of RKC it was difficult not to react on the pitch. “I felt like kicking someone at the end of the game,” Anas Tahiri admitted honestly. “But you just have to be smart and stay calm, that’s how football is. It’s annoying anyway. But you have to shit about it and just move on.”

RKC hasn’t picked up a single point yet; the opening game with Vitesse was lost 0-1. The Grim team failed to score in seven out of ten Eredivisie games in 2020, which, together with ADO Den Haag, is the highest number of all teams. On a positive note, the pass accuracy of RKC (79.1%) was the highest for a team in an away game with Ajax in the Eredivisie since sc Heerenveen on 14 September 2019 (80.4%).