28 Sep 2010: Ajax - AC Milan

[Orange14]

Were not all three Milan players off side?

[Ajaxfanuk]

:( bloody Zlatan :(

[GangstaRiB]

No wasn't offside. They stayed behind the ball.

Ajax were playing only with 10 men... typical Italian.

[aveslacker]

Were not all three Milan players off side?

Looked like it to me.

But we kinda had it coming, what with all the aimless balls played backwards once we got the goal.

[aveslacker]

No wasn't offside. They stayed behind the ball.

Ajax were playing only with 10 men... typical Italian.

On the replay, Seedorf was a good three yards offside before he passed it to Zlatan.

[aveslacker]

Oh, and Zlatan was offside by about a foot on the pass from Seedorf.

[Purple Cow's Ghost]

Seedorf was definitely off-side, and it looked to me as if Ibrahimovic controlled the ball with his upper arm.

But anyway, Ajax defend in a flat line too close to the half way line, this makes them very vulnerable to the ball dinked over their heads into space. The warning signs were there for all to see with the first Twente goal last Saturday.

All in all an excellent 45 minutes of football, but Ajax's defensive naivity will cost them in the end. But at least they are going down fighting this time.

[Orange14]

One of the better half performances we have had this season. Good passing and better than decent defense. Just saw the Milan goal replay. Difficult to tell whether it was off sides or not; hard to tell on the angle that they showed.

[SPL]

Looked offside to me .We can still win this.

[Philippe]

How many off sides on the Milan's goal : 1, 2 or 3 ???
And what about Zambrota's foul on Anita, which was obviously on purpose.
Shit team : Zlatan and 10 thugs.

[paladinby]

I'd say we must win this to avenge Anita.

Edit: I'm not sure what our midfield is doing this game, especially De Zeeuw. The ref is clearly afraid to reduce Milan to 10/9/8 man, what they deserve.

[Azeri]

Second half was typical Italian playing - destroying, a lot of fouls etc

[Orange14]

Guess I'll take the tie given that we played quite well. Too bad about conceding the one goal on what may have been an off sides but that's the way the cookie crumbles. I think this is one of the better matches we played; focused throughout the match. Defense was pretty solid and the offense was using space quite well. We are still reluctant to play up through the midfield and I guess having two defensive midfielders is something we are going to have to live with. Too bad Enoh is not better on the ball.

[Ajaxfanuk]

Irritating that was within our grasp, Auxerre lost though so if we can beat them id say we're odds on for at least 3rd which means our european adventure isnt over, really needed a win tonight though, gotta make those home games count. But we played well and can hold our heads high. Get well soon Anita also

[SPL]

we played well and only let in an offside goal .Attack and defence were good but I am not a fan of 2 defensive mf .Lindgren looked better than de Zeeuw when he came on.

Not sure how Milan finished with 11 men . Their style of football represents everything I hate in the game . Hope Anita recovers ok , the tackle did not get a yellow!!

[Amol]

Well, at least we were able to play football in this game. Our midfield seriously lacks a playmaker. This was 10 times better than the show we put on at the Bernabeu.

We need to take care of Auxerre now.

[souras84]

Well, at least we were able to play football in this game. Our midfield seriously lacks a playmaker. This was 10 times better than the show we put on at the Bernabeu.

We need to take care of Auxerre now.

THERE WAS NO DE JONG ONCE AGAIN. It is the curse of number 10. Whoever changes to that number the last years except sneider gets worse

[orange goblin]

lodeiro or nothing!
anyway: I am proud of the personality ajax showed today. my mvps: steek, enoh, suarez in no specific order.
but not including de jong and mickey they were all good. there's some future at ajax.

[Orange14]

I know that there is a lot of criticism of de Jong but I think we are losing sight of what he's really doing out on the field. I caution that the following remarks are only what I can judge by what I see on the Internet telecasts and not being able to see the match in person it is difficult to tell what he is doing off the ball as the camera does not pick it up. I suspect that Jol has him playing more of a withdrawn striker behind El Hamdaoui which confines his role for the most part to the middle third of the field. Suarez gets free reign to mover about on the right flank and sometimes moves to the left. It's difficult then to create an attacking triangle that is on side with this type of set up. When Sulejmani is on and Urby moves back to fullback things are even worse as Sulejmani won't stay out on the flank as Urby does which creates even more congestion inside. I don't think that any of this is necessarily de Jong's fault. He is also not a natural playmaker and playing him higher up is not the answer either.

It's also apparent that we are really playing more of a 4-2-4 than anything else right now. Probably the main reason that de Zeeuw is in Jol's doghouse is he doesn't want to do all the defensive duty that is being assigned to the two deep lying midfielders. As I've noted in the past we also have trouble linking up because Enoh is not very good with the ball in terms of knowing where he is in relation to other players. Lindgren is a solid working man but nothing beyond that (though he is usually positionally in the right place).

These are the cards that we have to play and unless Lodeiro is something special (hard to tell based on last year or from the WC matches) de Jong will stay on the field. I've wondered whether Eriksen might be good at that position but he seems now to be out of the rotation in favor of Sulejmani. Sulejmany had a couple of good plays today but usually has no clue about what is happening on the field.

Enough for tonight; I'm glad we came out to play but a little disappointed we didn't take all three points. I still think we can finish second with a bit of luck.

[ajaxcolombia]

I'm really proud of what Ajax did today. We should have won, but what the hell. The stadium looked beatiful and the atmosphere almost brought a tear to my eye. Really, who cares about this Bosman crap, we still have a beatiful club with incredible fans,and listening to those chants of AJAX blasting through the speakers of the TV made me real proud of being an Ajax fan. Sorry just made me feel incredibly emotional. And the ovation when Seedorf came off the field, incredible, very very classy. You know, I bet we have all complained about the ArenA in the past but tonight we really made it ours (well not me personally, I'm all the way on the other side of the Atlantic and the equator, but you know what I mean).

[Tom_]

Yeah we put ourselves in the position to win the game, which you can't complain about. Bad luck on the offside goal (Zlatan was certainly behind the ball when Seedorf made the pass, but I though Seedorf looked off), bad luck on some tame refereeing, but at least we didn't concede a second at the end there.

[Kowalczyk]

Sorry Philippe, but I'm going to delete your poll on the Zlatan goal... This zone is for match threads only.

I will re-post the two posts below the poll here, though...

How many off sides on the AC Milan goal ?

I think that Zlatan wasn't offside when Seedorf passed ball to him, but how did Seedorf managed to get into that position is a good question. There were no good replays since the start of that thuggish attack.

K.

[Philippe]

Sorry Philippe, but I'm going to delete your poll on the Zlatan goal... This zone is for match threads only.
K.

It's a pleasure .

[Purple Cow's Ghost]

Enoh was my man of the match, he just concentrates on doing the simple things well. He gets the ball off the opposition and gives a simple pass to one of his (relatively) more creative team mates. He reminds me of a young Claude Makelele.

Every team needs an Enoh.

Unfortunately, every team also needs a creative midfielder, and (with the possible exception of Lodeiro) we don't appear to have one of those.

[Philippe]

In spite of the rather expensive tickets, seing empty seats was surprising and sad.