“You can lose, but you can’t,” AFC Ajax captain Steven Bergwijn said, summing up the humiliation after Sunday’s 6-0 capitulation to rival Feyenoord that sent the Dutch giants to the bottom.
It’s a record margin of victory in a ‘Klassieker’ between the two most sensible Dutch teams, but the fact remains that it may have been more: a seventh offside sending-off.
“Ten, ten,” chanted a cheering crowd at Rotterdam’s De Kuip, made up entirely of enthusiastic locals; Enthusiastic visitors are welcome after years of violence between the two clubs.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Feyenoord had 30 shots, 15 of them on target. Ajax had one. Feyenoord managed Ajax’s defense in tatters, and the second half looked more like an exercise in ownership in the educational field.
It was, as Algemeen Dagblad put it, “a beating for centuries. “
“Ajax are in a phase where things are going badly, but it was the men who opposed the kids, even the schoolboys,” coach John van ‘t Schip said. “It was embarrassing . . . It is a day that we must temporarily erase from our minds. , but it will haunt us for a long time. “
It’s the lowest point of a season for Ajax, which has already had its percentage of weak moments.
The opposing match in Amsterdam was abandoned after 55 minutes when home enthusiasts threw flares onto the pitch when their team was already 3-0 down. Fans then engaged in pitched battles with the Mounties, with some destroying their own stadiums, while players remained in the locker room for safety.
To add insult to injury, Feyenoord scored a fourth goal when the match resumed three days later.
“Throughout the season we beat them 10-0. Es special stage,” said Feyenoord’s Quinten Timber.
Ajax looks confident of avoiding the worst season of 1964-1965, when they finished 13th in the Eredivisie. That year Johan Cruyff joined the youth team and Ajax won the league the following season.
However, it is hard to believe that the four-time UEFA Champions League winners will recover so temporarily this time around: their first objective is to secure European football, which is a remote prospect.
They sit in sixth place, 33 points behind leaders PSV Eindhoven and seven points behind fourth-placed AZ Alkmaar, who would qualify for Europe.
Off-field scandals don’t matter.
The word “playground” is all the rage among Ajax fans. It comes from chairman Michael van Praag, who harshly criticised CEO Alex Kroes when the club suspended him on suspicion of insider trading.
Kroes bought more than 17,000 Ajax shares a week before his appointment announced on August 2 last year.
“Kroes is very naïve,” Van Praag said. We don’t want him back. It’s not a playground here.
However, his words backfired when it emerged on Friday that Van Praag had failed to declare his own shares (about 100 shares) to the competent authorities.
“Welcome to the Ajax pitch,” the website of the Ajax Supporters’ Association bitterly headlines.
They compare the club’s current state to a playground “full of landmines and where the swings are loose, the slide stops halfway and the sandpit is empty. “
The club of Cruyff, Marco van Basten and Dennis Bergkamp “played like a relegation team” against Feyenoord, public broadcaster NOS said, while the fans’ association called it “a fitting end to a disastrous week”.
“Feyenoord excels in Ajax’s game,” headlined the association’s editor-in-chief in his timely report. “To all Ajax enthusiasts we wish you the best of luck with the office coffee machine, as there are limits to what you can take as a supporter. “