General Football Discussion

[Tom_]

Or even Liverpool eh?

[Cruijff]

Watching Liverpool/Dortmund EL match. Why can't Ajax play like Dortmund????

Oh if you send out Van der Hoorn together with Viergever or use Riedewald or Ricardo van Rhijn on a poor day we can also give away 4 easy goals, friend.

[Tom_]

Tell you what though, I wouldn't mind if Ajax played some exciting games like that, even if we're on the losing side...

[Cruijff]

Tell you what though, I wouldn't mind if Ajax played some exciting games like that, even if we're on the losing side...

Yes, this season our European campaign was so extremely poor that you are really looking forward to some spectacular matches.

Winning matches against Man United, Wolfsburg and CSKA Moscow like PSV did or being competitive against Liverpool, a team with a lot of weak spots in the squad we should also be able to do that...........

[Orange14]

Spurs were up 0-2 at Chelsea but couldn't hang on and a great goal by Hazard tied the match so................................................LEICESTER CITY ARE EPL CHAMPIONS.

5000-1 shot at the beginning of the season and now champions. Major props to Ranieri and the club. Now for an Ajax Champions League win next season.

[SPL]

Important game today.In the Championship my local big team Brighton& Hove Albion play at Middlesbrough and need to win to be automatically promoted to the EPL.Hugh interest in my part of the world.

Last week my local team Worthing were promoted to league level 7 ,(Rymans Premier). So hope that there is more local celebrating today.

I should add I do watch Worthing as its a 5 minutes walk to the ground ,which is a similar size to de Toekomst,but I am a fan of one club only AFC Ajax.When I came in last Saturday the very first score I looked up was our A1 youth team.English football always comes 2nd to my beloved Ajax.

[SPL]

Middlesbrough up to the Premiership,drew 1-1 with Brighton who now have to play in the playoffs.
Having been born and grown up in the beautiful city of Oxford I still follow the mighty Oxford United and they were promoted to league div 1 .

So just need the most important result tomorrow.

[Orange14]

Bayern just spent over €70M for Dortmund's Mats Hummels and Benfica's 19 year old winger Renate Sanches. It's more apparent than ever that the rich clubs can buy whomever they want everyone else fights for scraps or has an aggressive youth program. Next season EPL teams will be getting over €120M in television money alone!! This is more than the Ajax operating budget! Personally, I really think we will see a 20 team Euro big club league with head to head competition within the next 5 or so years as the money is just too big to leave on the table (of course the Dutch clubs despite their fabled history will be on the outside looking in). Platini has now resigned as head of UEFA so there will be some sort of shake up there. We will learn a lot more when they appoint his successor.

If there is a Euro League here are some clubs that are probably guaranteed to be in it:

ManU
ManCity
Arsenal
Liverpool
Tottenham
Barca
Madrid
Athletico (as long as Simione is manager)
PSG
Bayern
Dortmund
Juventus
Milan (if they get a new stadium)

That's 13 clubs that are probably locks. The three big Portuguese clubs do pretty well in CL and maybe 1-2 of them make this cut as well. Of course the EPL will oppose this as they don't want to see their cash cow disrupted and if the big five teams leave there will be a huge void and their TV contract will be negotiated downward. It's interesting to contemplate and if a marketing person is the next head of UEFA it will happen.

[ajaxusa]

Scroll.in: Why does the Netherlands hate football club Ajax Amsterdam so much?
Discuss…

[Orange14]

^^For the same reason that lots of us in the US hate the baseball New York Yankees. Ajax have been so good for so long that they are bound to be the #1 opponent for every other club in the league. Ajax seem to think that just because they are Ajax that every team will roll over. Doesn't work that way.

[SPL]

Well it didn't work on Sunday!

[Tom_]

"Incredibly, the scenes after Graafschap equalised were incredible." Stopped reading.

;)

[ajaxusa]

This has been kind of bugging me since I read it. I think there is *some* truth in it. (@Kowalczyk has educated me on this topic, generally.) I had a good conversation with a couple of Dutch-speaking gents in a trendy pub in SF last week. Two youngish (30's) software guys. One from the Netherlands ("PSV fan") and one from Belgium. They both rejected the thesis of this article. Their position was that people don't "hate" Ajax. They both said that it's common to hear "Ajax was my second team as a kid." They just think people get a kick out of the big boys falling on their faces.

I'm sure the truth is somewhere in between. Some fans definitely resent Ajax' success *and* swagger.

But what I think those videos (also) capture is a normal enthusiasm for the underdog. Nobody wants the same team(s) to win it every year. Now PSV has won it 2x in a row, and is dominant along with Ajax. If they cock it up on the final day next season, you will see the same giddy reaction. It won't mean that people "hate" PSV.

[SPL]

Cannot get excited about the Euros as the Dutch are not there.I know I am English and should support my football country but as I have said before way back in 1974, having already discovered this special team from Amsterdam ,I saw Cruijff and the beautiful Oranje. I became hopelessly in love with your football, and the magic of the Oranje ,with all their Ajax players , it will never leave me.I am an adopted Oranje fan and I wont apologise. I hate the English Premiership as its purely about money and overhyped overrated overpaid oiks.

I will wish England well and pleased that with CL qualifiers coming up in late July Milik is our only player at the Euros and he is being sold.

PS To all of you I am only anti England at Football.I will always cheer on my country at every other sport

[Tom_]

Well I think that might be the most boring major tournament I remember watching. Did anyone else think the format, with basically three quarters of teams qualifying for the knockouts, killed it a little bit? The final certainly wasn't played between the two best teams...

[SPL]

Would agree a very long winded boring tournament.Still not sure how the Oranje were not there.Not the same without them.

[Orange14]

I agree with Tom. It's difficult for me to identify a single game that was memorable; perhaps the Italy/Germany match that went to penalties. Strategically it was quite interesting and had two of the worst taken penalties I've ever seen (Pelle and Zaza). The fact that Portugal won the tournament by finishing third in their group and only winning one match in 90 minutes was a joke. I hope UEFA go back to the 16 team format but doubt they will as the money is too great.

Hiddink screwed up the Orange in the early qualification matches and I think they would have made the semifinals had they qualified.

[rjf1]

The majority of the games exemplified the style of football played in Italy that pretty much ruined Serie A as a league interesting to watch. Nothing annoys me more than when the announcers start praising the 'park the bus' teams for their "organization" and determination. It's a championship tournament (supposedly) -- if you have to play 'park the bus' football to survive, you don't belong in the tournament to begin with. And if you win by playing ptb football, you may win the tournament but you can't call yourself champions -- you have to win with style and class to be a true champion

[Ayman]

Ajax play Rostov in the CL qualifiers! the Russians beat Anderlecht away 0-2 after drawing 2-2 at home!

[SPL]

Happy with that .Monaco and Roma would be no chance .Young Boys,Steau Bucherest Rostov all beatable but I would have taken any one of those 3.

[Ayman]

Happy with that .Monaco and Roma would be no chance .Young Boys,Steau Bucherest Rostov all beatable but I would have taken any one of those 3.

For some reason, Swiss teams are fun to play against, e.g. Thun and Zurich Grasshoppers

[Manneken Pis]

Happy with that .Monaco and Roma would be no chance .Young Boys,Steau Bucherest Rostov all beatable but I would have taken any one of those 3.

Yes we dodged the bullets there.
But given our recent European record it's still far from certain we'll qualify...

[Ayman]

Happy with that .Monaco and Roma would be no chance .Young Boys,Steau Bucherest Rostov all beatable but I would have taken any one of those 3.

Yes we dodged the bullets there.
But given our recent European record it's still far from certain we'll qualify...

I remember Ajax losing to Russian teams, once several years ago in the Europa leauge and once in 1998 Uefa cup quarter finals against Spartak Moscow, can't remember winning against any

[rjf1]

For some reason Eastern European teams always seem to cause us problems. Can only hope for the best with this.

[King Litti]

The Russian league has quality. For a team to finnish in 2nd place they have to know how to play football. The commentator in the draw said that they were kind of "the Leicester of Russia". So on paper they are not that strong I guess. Hope they have lost their form a bit and I wouldn't be surprised being a smaller club that they would have lost some key players from last year, but don't know this for a fact. There are no weak teams at this point, but yes, we could have done worse that Rostov. We should have a chance.