Ajax was far too strong for Young Boys in the eighth finals of the Europa League on Thursday evening and deservedly won 3-0. The team of trainer Erik ten Hag will travel to Bern next week with a generous lead, where qualification for the quarterfinals can be enforced. The Dutch newspapers are very pleased with the game that Ajax showed in the Johan Cruijff ArenA. “It seems that Ajax puts itself on the European football map every other year”, it sounds in the match report The Telegraph.
Journalist Mike Verweij refers to the Europa League final of 2017 and a place in the last four in the Champions League in 2019. “Erik ten Hag’s excellent team turned Young Boys upside down (3-0) and in 2021 will have a leg and a half. in the quarter finals of the Europa League ”, he writes. “During the Europa League meeting, the wind was howling around the dense Johan Cruijff ArenA. The announced Swiss storm was out of the question. The unthreatened leader of the Super League was relegated to a very mediocre team by the concentrated playing team from Amsterdam. The only reproach that Ten Hag had to make his players halfway through was that they did not take the lead in a generous way. ” Ajax got off to a strong start, but missed several opportunities to open the score. Halfway through, it was therefore still 0-0.
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In the second half Ajax scored three times via Davy Klaassen, Dusan Tadic and substitute Brian Brobbey. “Ajax fans could consider starting an autograph campaign to keep Brobbey in Amsterdam. The nineteen-year-old striker is the first Ajax player since Dennis Rommedahl in the 2009/10 season, who scores as a substitute in two European matches. Twice against Lille, at PSV and now again the product of their own training was worth gold, ”the newspaper reports. “Marc Overmars (director of football affairs, ed.) Recently flew to Monaco to talk again with Brobbeys agent Mino Raiola about contract extension and to prevent the talent from leaving the Johan Cruijff ArenA transfer-free next summer.” In the meantime, Brobbey doesn’t seem to like it anymore. Italian transfer expert Fabrizio Romano reported on Thursday evening that the striker has reached an oral agreement with RB Leipzig.
According to it Algemeen Dagblad Ajax already has one leg in the quarter finals of the Europa League. “The Swiss champion Young Boys acted as a plaything for ninety minutes. With the 3-0 victory, Ajax did Dutch football a great service ”, the newspaper refers to the coefficient ranking, on which the seventh place has been taken at the expense of Russia. “Five years ago, ‘we’ still occupied the fourteenth place. The advance and the improved entrance tickets for the Netherlands in Europe are largely the result of Ajax’s successful campaigns in 2017 and 2019. Anyone who saw the ambitious club make short work of Young Boys yesterday, can hardly help the impression that the next triumphal march through Europe is “According to the newspaper, the difference in strength with Young Boys was not great before half time, but gigantic.” Ajax drove the visitors to despair. With many position changes, with smooth combinations and with enormous pressure without a ball. The fact that Ajax took risks and stormed the enemy goal with more and more players, not only said something about the confidence in the team, but also about the resistance. It was so poor that you wondered how on earth Peter Bosz could choke on Young Boys with Bayer Leverkusen. ”
Three Ajax players stand out in a duel with Young Boys
Voetbalzone saw three Ajax players excel against Young Boys.
Thanks to the big victory Ajax has according to de Volkskrant already unofficially qualified for the next round. Reporter Willem Vissers saw a big difference in strength between the two teams from the press stand. “It was as if a skilled tennis player was up against an opponent with much less technique, who hits all the piss balls back and runs on every ball thanks to an iron condition. But often the lesser eventually gives in anyway, simply because it is no longer possible to walk, because the ball is always faster than the human being. ” In the report, Young Boys is described as a team that plays football in ‘the fashion of today’s football’: “Compact, little real interest in long-term possession, sometimes pushing forward like a block by applying clever pressure, trying to conquer the ball and so on. make a shot for a field goal as quickly as possible. Physically strong too. They can all walk, except for old acquaintance Miralem Sulejmani, once the most expensive Ajax player of all time, who participated half. He looked slimmer than about ten years ago in his Ajax time, but he ran a bit stiff and his passes lacked purity. ”
Where the aforementioned newspapers emphasize the difference in strength between Ajax and Young Boys, it saw NRC that the team from Amsterdam had a hard time with the team of trainer Gerardo Seoane for an hour. “The Swiss champion kept the lines closed for a long time, Thursday evening in the Johan Cruijff Arena. But when Davy Klaassen had finally opened the score after more than an hour of play, Ajax helped itself to a victory that was as big as it was deserved ”, it sounds. “Ajax attacked at a slow pace. Attacker Antony should have opened the score for the team from Amsterdam after five minutes, but he ran into goalkeeper Guillaume Faivre. Ryan Gravenberch was also close to a goal. It was due to the sloppy play of Ajax that Young Boys made it to halftime unscathed. While Ajax created opportunities, the Swiss hardly managed to pose any danger to Maarten Stekelenburg’s goal. ”