South American connection

We may have found something here...it makes perfect sense...Suarez and Cvitanich...duh! On a day that Ajax said goodbye to its former #1 striker with fireworks and speeches, it was the two young South American stars that stole the show and created some fireworks of their own. The Argentinian and Uruguayan combined to score all 3 goals (all scored by Dario) Sunday at the Arena. What a day it was for Cvitanich, when the pressure of replacing a player like KJH must have felt stronger than ever. He showed the ArenA crowd that perhaps Danny Blind was right when he stated that Ajax already had KJH's replacement. Luis Suarez had a huge match as well, and showed that not only is he really great at flopping in the box and dribbling circles around people, he can also play the role of set up man, assisting on all 3 goals. Ajax are the hottest team in the Eredivise right now, which is great...hopefully the winter break won't slow down the momentum they have built up. The boys have 2 weeks off until they travel to Portugal for a friendly with Bundesliga #10 VfB Stuttgart. Stay focused guys.

Happy New Year!

Goal differential padded in Doetinchem

Wow, 6-0.....I remember when scorelines like this used to be the norm rather than a once in a while occurrence. We all know how important the goal differential can be at the end of the season, and Sunday's win over De Graafschap definitely helped pad that crucial statistic. One match left before the 3 week winter break, Den Haag at home on Sunday. AZ plays at home to NEC, certainly not a automatic win for them, which means that Ajax could finish up the first half of the season tied for first place. PSV and Twente play each other this weekend, which means one or both of those two teams will fall further off the pace as well.

So whats the impression of van Basten's first half of the season? Not too bad in my opinion. He has managed to get most of the new players acclimated to playing with each other, and has manged to brush off the departure of the teams most visible and dominant player with little more than a shrug. Not only are the big off season transfer players starting to play well (Sulejmani, Cvitanich), but unheralded newcomers like Eyong Enoh and 'unwanted' players like Leonardo are playing well and have made major contributions at critical moments this season. And all of this has taken place while Ajax has gone through one of the most injury plagued seasons in a long time. Not everything has been perfect, (bad losses at Heerenveen, Tilburg, and Volendam...), but the team has always managed to bounce back pretty well from each loss. Hell, Ajax is even doing well in Europe, which is much more than I can say for our friends at PSV or Feyenoord. Speaking of Feyenoord, as much as like to watch them suffer, its scary to think how quickly and easily this all seems to be happening to them. I ALMOST feel bad for them, but not quite. Same goes for PSV, especially with their awful European performances. I always root for the Eredivise in Europe, and things are not looking good. Ajax, Twente and NEC need to continue to play well in the UEFA Cup, or pretty soon the Holland is going to start to fall behind smaller countries/leagues like the Portuguese Liga and Greek Super League in not only peoples minds but more importantly, the UEFA coefficient.

Well, I hope everyone has a happy and safe holiday, and I hope I get the away jersey I asked for this year :)

Cheers!

Its Fiorentina

Ajax discovered their UEFA Cup fate today, they have been paired with Fiorentina, the current #5 in Seria A. A progression to the round of 16 would bring a matchup with the Marseille/Twente winner. I don't know a much of Fiorentina other than Adrian Mutu's brilliance, but I'll assume that they play typical Italian football...our forwards will have to play their hearts out to score any goals against them. Ajax has not fared well against Italian competition recently, hopefully they can reverse this trend. UEFA Cup play resumes on Feb 18-19.

NEC are through!

You can't help but be a little bit happy for NEC Nijmegen, who beat Udinese 2-0 tonight and

made it throught to the knock-out stages of the UEFA Cup. The little team that has always been in Vitesse's shadow has made history...good for the Eredivisie and great for them!

Bring on the CL dropout...

Sorry for the lack of posts recently, I did not get a chance to watch the NAC match on Sunday, but the result looked very impressive, even with NAC's recent struggles. I did get a chance to watch yesterday's final group stage match vs Slavia Prague, a rather meaningless game that Ajax managed to sleepwalk through and earn one point. A team that had yet to score a single goal in the group stages somehow managed to put 2 into Vermeer's nets by halftime, and only a very questionable injury time penalty (created by Suarez, shocker) saved a point for Ajax. I'm not sure why this team historically has given Ajax such a hard time, but I'm real glad this game did not carry more meaning for either team.
Not much to say about this game actually, Daley Blind made his European debut and played a good half of football, and Vurnon Anita played 90 minutes. That's about it. Ajax now waits for Friday's knockout stage draw where the will be paired with one of the following teams:

Werder Bremen, Aalborg, Girodins Bordeaux, Olympique Marseille, Shakhtar Donetsk, Fiorentina, Dynamo Kiev or Zenit St. Petersburg

All good teams, but certainly nothing to be extremely worried about, although I'm sure van Basten would prefer not to have to travel to Kiev or St. Petersburg.

Interesting news out of Liverpool...

Well this would be a surprise. Soccernet reported this morning that Ryan Babel is so fed up with his lack of playing time at Liverpool that he has been trying to convince the Merseyside brass to send him BACK to the ArenA on loan to kick start his career. Of course I'm biased, but this sounds like a great idea for the kid, not to mention a great idea for Ajax! Who needs KJH?!? Of course Liverpool does not really want to lose a talent like Ryan, so this probably will never happen, but man would I love to see him play in Amsterdam again. What a great talent he is, and it sucks that he's rotting on the bench up in England. I'll be following this story closely...

http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story?id=600607&sec=england&cc=5901

Looks wierd doesn't it?

Yeah, I'm finding it hard to look at this picture too. KJH was unveiled today at the Bernabeu, where he will try to put some life into the struggling title hopes of the Madrid team. I guess we should all be happy for him, right? He's a class act and deserves a chance to win at the highest level. Besides, it will be really cool to watch Madrid if Huntelaar shows up next to Sneijder, Robin and van der Vaart.

Whats next for Ajax? According to Danny Blind, not much. His comments on the matter? "We have already signed Klaas Jan's successor". Whats this, a new signing already? No, unfortunately Danny was just referring to Dario Cvitanich, a player that honestly has a lot of potential, but has yet to show much for all the hype. Think about it though...sure KJH is a special player and was by far the biggest offensive threat that Ajax has had for years, but how much of an impact has he really had recently? When the transfer rumors started flying around last year, Huntelaar just seemed to slip into a funk that he only partially came out of this season before injuring his ankle. Suarez has picked up a lot of slack, the previously "unwanted" Leonardo has scored goals at crucial moments this season and I can totally see Miralem Sulejmani returning to the form that attracted Ajax to him last year. I ain't sweatin it!

What a surprising win in Hamburg last week, tough to loose points at home to Utrecht though. Today's UEFA Cup results did see Ajax through to the knockout stages, taking a lot of pressure out of the last group stage match against Slavia Prague. The knockout round includes the top 3 teams from each group and 8 Champions League drop-outs. 32 teams...that's a long way to go to reach Istanbul.