Daley Blind stood out in a negative way at Ajax on Saturday evening. The defender was, among other things, impure in his passing in the Eredivisie match with Willem II (0-1), according to the analysts of ESPN while The Grandstand† Kees Kwakman in particular is not pleased with the game that the left back on duty put on the mat.
In the first act in particular, Blind played a negative lead due to a number of weak warm-up passes. For example, the left back handed in a ball to Daniel Crowley in the 21st minute in an easy way, who gave a deep pass to Ché Nunnely. The latter found Jizz Hornkamp with his cross, but his foot did not hit the ball well and shot wide. “Willem II lets them play very much through the sides, which makes it very difficult for Ajax”, Kwakman judged in the break. “Blind has another match where he is very sloppy. If Willem II had played it out a few times better, the chances could have been even greater.”
Jan Joost van Gangelen speaks of a ‘Blindian first half’, as the defender mainly gave a lot of ‘blind balls’ in the eyes of the presenter. “Every now and then he has a match like that…”, Kwakman continues. “It’s actually a compliment to Blind, because normally he’s always so good at the ball. So you don’t expect those bad balls from him. But with him it’s always so extreme. You can also see it in Blind himself. Like: is it going to be that kind of competition again? Although he also has the gift of suddenly putting the ball between the lines. He will keep trying in a footballing way, and he has to.”
After the minimal victory, trainer Erik ten Hag is asked at the press conference about his opinion about Blind’s game. Although he does not want to go into too much detail about the performance of his pupil, he briefly talks about Willem II’s switch, which was preceded by Blind’s mistake. “We have to watch out for that in such a phase, because then you can fall behind. But in the end those counters were defended very well,” said Ten Hag.