The analysts of ESPN think that Steven Berghuis will be preferred to Antony at Ajax as a right winger for the time being. The 21-year-old winger played the Olympic Games in Tokyo with Brazil last month, where a gold medal was won, and is therefore still on holiday. In the program The Ultimate Preview by ESPN Marciano Vink predicts that Antony will not easily handle a spare role.
“I think that when he comes back, he has to go to the waiting room,” Vink starts in the talk show. But how long will he keep that up? He is a Brazilian, temperamental. You could already see after a number of substitutions last season that he was not happy. Then he would walk around on the outside with a face like an earwig. In that case he was replaced by his friend Neres. They put each other down, guys like that didn’t come to Europe to sit on the couch.”
“If you look at statistics, I think trainers should do that, then Berghuis is better. He was involved in 32 goals”, Hans Kraay junior adds. “Do you remember how Antony started?”, responds Kenneth Perez, who is also present. “At the time we all thought: he can dribble fantastically, has speed, seeks depth and can also score goals. That stagnated a bit.”
“That stagnated because Neres got fit and had to play more often,” continues Vink. “Neres had a certain status because he played well in the Champions League year. That brought down Antony’s performance. Guys like this have to play back to back to get into a certain rhythm, because he started great.”
“That will be difficult with Berghuis as a competitor, because I assume that he was bought to play. But yes, Antony cost a multiple of what Berghuis bought,” says Perez. However, Vink is concerned about the lack of depth in the front line of Ajax if Berghuis gets a basic place. “If you play with Tadic, Haller and Berghuis, you miss the depth. That worries me. Klaassen is not the type to rumble over it. He comes in as the second striker in the box, but he is not one to rumble in the spaces and get behind Haller.”