Ajaxtalk

KNVB Cup 2013-2014. Round of Sixteen.

Kick-off time at De Westmaat in Spakenburg is 20:45 CET.

The name of this opponent might be total gibberish to some of you. Here's a few things of interest.

* IJsselmeervogels are the biggest and historically most succesful amateur football club in The Netherlands. They play in the Topklasse (level 3 of the pyramid) and they were the over-all amateur champions of The Netherlands several times.

* They are from the town of Spakenburg. The local derby, IJsselmeervogels vs Spakenburg (the 'Reds' versus the 'Blues'), is one of Holland's biggest local football derbies, played in front of more than 10,000 fans in a town of 20,000 inhabitants.

* The name IJsselmeervogels means 'IJsselmeer Birds'. The IJsselmeer is the big lake in the heart of The Netherlands. The (very Christian!) fisherman's town of Spakenburg is on the south coast of it.

* The combination 'IJ' is a uniquely Dutch vowel. It doesn't exist in any other language, but the English word 'eye' comes close. 'IJsselmeer' is pronounced [ˌɛi̯.səɫ.ˈmeːr], or 'Eye-sull-mere'. The IJssel is a river, IJsselmeer is 'Lake IJssel', the lake at the end of the river IJssel.

* The IJsselmeer used to be a small open sea (the Zuiderzee or 'South Sea') until it was closed by a 32 kilometres long dam, the Afsluitdijk (built 1927-1932) to become a large lake, the largest lake in Western Europe but not the lake with the most water in it, 'cos it's very shallow. The dam was finished and officially opened for traffic on 28 May 1932; the IJsselmeervogels football club was established nine days later, on 06 June.

* The home shirt of IJsselmeervogels is pretty much identical to the Ajax jersey, but they wear red shorts.

* The fans normally abbreviate the name of their team to Vogels ('Birds').

K.

Thanks Ko for the explanation, I couldn't read that name for another 2000 years. For a moment I thought I was in one of Thor's realms... Viking mythology!

... And of course the same vowel sound is found in the name of the very pleasant brewery known as t'Ij.

An interesting opponent. I'm sure their fans and players will be super fired up to play against the 32 times champion from the capital. Seriously I suppose we should go through without a doubt, but they will make us work for it.

Time to give playing time to some youngsters perhaps. Van der Hart maybe and others too. Andersen would need playing time to develop or maybe he would need actually time in the weight room more than anything. He is like a skinny child. Poulsen looks like He-Man next to him.

aveslacker schreef:... And of course the same vowel sound is found in the name of the very pleasant brewery known as t'Ij.

That's right, Sir. Those were good times (I live really close to the brewery now, no longer in West Amsterdam).

Since it's basically one vowel, we write both characters as capitals: 't IJ brewery ('t is short for 'het', which is an article, basically meaning 'the'), river IJssel, IJsselmeer, IJsselmeervogels.



K.

Thanks Ko for the info on our opponents. Must be a football mad little town with 2 Topklasse teams !

Surprisingly little change in the squad for this cup game.

Cillessen given a rest so van der Hart or Vermeer will play. I guess it should be van der Hart since Vermeer is probably not going to be with us for much longer and one cup game won't increase his selling value no matter how well he would play. De Sa and van der Hoorn also out. What did we pay for van der Hoorn? It was at least a couple of millions. He can't even make it to the bench in a cup game! He is replaced by promising youngster Jairo Riedewald. Hope he sees some action.

Did van der Hoorn get injured in the Milan match? I saw he had a nasty bump on his forehead just after the match and maybe had a collision in the box. It's surprising that he has been left off for the second time in a row.

De Boer told him that he didn't want 2 central defenders on the bench. So he prefered including the young left back just in case. As he told VdH, it's a positional matter. Nothing personal.

Vermeer

Ligeon,Veltman,Moisander,Blind

Klaassen,Poulsen, Serero

Bojan,Hoesen,Fischer

With Cillessen rested and Schone and VRhijn on the bench thats a strong line up.

Nice t-shirt by home team. I was kinda expecting a more experimental line-up.

nicely taken by Fischer of the cross from Bojan

nice left footed shot by Hoesen This match could see a lot of goals.

After the second goal we really began to play poorly. Too many soft passes and give aways. Should be an easy win but we are making it difficult.

a very comfortable half by us after the 2 early goals, we should score afew more. Their shirt looks familiar

That was a nice goal, but our front three have not looked good today! Combination play has been basically absent..

Nice to see Riedewald get some playing time. Pretty average performance from everyone, just too sloppy with the ball and they won't be able to afford this on Sunday against Roda. Vermeer had a couple of good saves but otherwise had little to worry about. On to the next round in the Cup and a tough match coming up before the break. No player ratings for this one as it was just too boring a match and I had trouble staying awake!

Treated the 2nd half like a training match . Nice for Riedewald to get his first team debut

Next round we'll be facing Feyenoord in Amsterdam

Great start for the new year PSV at home on 19th and F word in the cup on 22nd .