18 Mar 2009: Ajax - Olympique Marseille

[Amol]

How do we always let in these comical goals?

[Venezuelan Ajacied]

How do we always let in these comical goals?

We have no captain in defense...too naive...

[Tom_]

Yeah. Both those goals were preventable. Stupid defending by Schilder to give away the free kick after not clearing the ball in the first instance

[orange goblin]

A shame, cause differently to many recent bad experiences in Europe, this time we showed more personality and skill. but the defense was ridiculous on their 2 goals..not a news..
I am proud of the guys, anyway.
Now we MUST gain the CL, no more to hope. is of vital importance.

[Van basten]

Sad.. At the end of the season, all what we have left is fighting for the 2 place in Eredivisie. Fuck that.

[SPL]

we played well and should have got through but comical defending again and as for Silva , what can you say. I thought we lost the game by not bringing on Leo and Cvitanich in normal time.

I'm exhausted now.

[dws]

Yeah. Both those goals were preventable. Stupid defending by Schilder to give away the free kick after not clearing the ball in the first instance

Poor defending + poor finishing = losing to a sack of shit team.


Ben Arfa is a suppurating little cnut; play acting f*cker got Silva sent off.

[orange goblin]

on their 2-2 there have been three fucking headers in a row in the penalty box!!! this explains all..
but come on let's think positive. with 6-7 players missing we had a good game. and a good run in the uefa cup, anyway, with so much to learn for a young team like this. we've beaten 2 good teams like hamburg and fiorentina and deserved more with l'OM.
I see a future, which is something I was missing in the past recent years.

[dws]

let's think positive. with 6-7 players missing we had a good game. and a good run in the uefa cup, anyway, with so much to learn for a young team like this. we've beaten 2 good teams like hamburg and fiorentina and deserved more with l'OM.
I see a future, which is something I was missing in the past recent years.

Yeah, overall it was a good footballing display - maybe the best of the season.
Aissati was excellent tonight.

[Tom_]

Yep Aissati was good. I thought Enoh was back to his best as well. I suppose we were always going to concede a couple with that defense; we had our chances at the other end but didn't make the most of them.

[bluedaddy19]

you guys seem to only want to go after the defense, but vermeer singlehandedly cost us this tie

enough bullshit already, stek back in net NOW!

I FUCKING HATE SOFT GOALS!!!!! AGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

[Amol]

I like how Vermeer is a really good reactionary keeper. But that's all he does. He waits too long for things to pan out and doesn't seem to want to take charge of the situation.

The second goal was a perfect example of that. 3 L'Om guys playing ping pong with their heads 5 feet from goal. He just kept watching them until it was too late.

[bluedaddy19]

The second goal was a perfect example of that. 3 L'Om guys playing ping pong with their heads 5 feet from goal. He just kept watching them until it was too late.

bingo!

and the first one canNOT get under him... over him or around him is one thing, but not fucking UNDER!!!

l'OM had 3 soft goals of 4 and were clearly outplayed

now, i'm not gonna go freaking out at the defense, the 4 of them were just thrown out together for the first time IIRC - despite silva being crap ans schilder providing nothing going forward, they generally did well as a unit

[Orange14]

I'm as disappointed as everyone else but found a lot to be pleased about. Marseille created virtually nothing. Second goal was a ping pong goal and not created from the run of play. First goal as an excellent through pass but as eveyone has already noted we made a mess of it. I saw some solid tackles in the midfield (when was the last time we saw defensive tackles???). Crisp fast passes and we had Marseille on their back feet for most of the game. Bad luck that the ball didn't settle right for Suarez late in regulation or we would have won this sucker free and clear.

We can not be critical of MVB today. He had them ready to play and play they did. I think Stek will be manning the goal on Sunday.

[Kowalczyk]

Best performance of the season.

No long, high balls, but intelligent combination play. Ajax football. Aissati was fantastic.

We were unfortunate this evening, but that happens. Fortunate against Fiorentina; unfortunate against Marseille - that's football.

Tonight I was proud of my team, though. They played really well - and they kept going. Keep this up, Ajax.

K.

[ajaxusa]

Just finished watching on espn360... I thought that was a great game by Ajax. They were the better team, should have won outright. Inexperience in defense cost us the game. But think about how well this team of near-teenagers played. That bodes well for the future.

And I think it's embarrassing that you guys jump on Vermeer's back. He's played brilliantly lately, well enough to unseat Steks. I rate Van Basten's opinion higher than yours or mine... Yes, he had a poor game and takes most of the blame for the first goal, but not the second. And to say he's single-handedly responsible for this result is ridiculous.

Well done Ajax. I am proud of you.

Marseille really are poor. They won't advance.

[Monkey Tonk]

A typical Ajax goalie doesn't have a lot to do during a game. On the few occasions when he is needed, he has to be reliable. That is the job description in Amsterdam, and it differs from what is expected from goalies at most other clubs. Ajax dominated most of the game last night, and there is no way on earth that Marseille deserved two goals. But they did get them, somehow. And neither goal was impossible to stop. In both cases Vermeer looked indecisive. That type of goal tending is just not good enough for Ajax. This doesn't mean Vermeer is not a good goalie. What it may mean is that he is not the right goalie for Ajax. He could be the type of goalie that is better on a team where he does get a lot of work.

Top sport is not about playing nice. Vermeer may just have had a bad game. It happens to the best. Still, if I had to judge him on that one performance, I wouldn't call it just bad. Based on the specific Ajax criteria that I outlined, he was shockingly bad. Unfortunately, it happened while Ajax played surprisingly good.

I take a somewhat more negative approach towards what happened last night. Yes, it is nice to think that this game is something to build on. And I hope that happens. But the outcome of the game itself may have been crucial in the building process. I was just reading up the other day on horses, in relation to betting. An almost certain way to break the winning spirit of an up-and-coming horse is to introduce it into a pasture where other, superior horses will assign it a lower place in the pecking order. The horse 'politely' adjusts to this, and suddenly can't win another race. I had this in mind when I watched some of the young players last night. Were they able to play the Ajax way because they didn't know any better? They didn't know the spirit of the team they were injected into. But now that Ajax has nothing left to play for (in the words of Suarez...), I'm afraid that they will find out. A win last night would have been huge. Now it remains to be seen who will tilt the balance. The new players towards the positive side and Ajax style. Or the older players towards the poor execution we have seen too much of.

Considering the missed opportunity, and the new challenge (of playing well with nothing to play for), Vermeer's performance was extra painful. That, right there, was the chance for Ajax to get out of the negative spiral...

[Kowalczyk]

Isn't it ironic, by the way, that on this particular day the fatal goal was scored in the 109th minute...?

K.

[The Purple Cow]

Ajax just need to spend money on a proper goalkeeper. Vermeer just isn't ready, maybe never will be, and Stekkers is just an embarrassment to the club.

Wot everybody else said about Aissati and Enoh - total class. We've got the basis of a really top-class midfield there.

Spending priorities for next summer.

1. A goalkeeper
2. A proper central defender
3. A right back who can pass the ball to his own team
4. A striker who with real presence in the opposition goal area

**

Ben Arfa is a fantastic footballer, I'd love to see him at Ajax.

[bluedaddy19]

A typical Ajax goalie doesn't have a lot to do during a game. On the few occasions when he is needed, he has to be reliable. That is the job description in Amsterdam, and it differs from what is expected from goalies at most other clubs. Ajax dominated most of the game last night, and there is no way on earth that Marseille deserved two goals. But they did get them, somehow. And neither goal was impossible to stop. In both cases Vermeer looked indecisive. That type of goal tending is just not good enough for Ajax. This doesn't mean Vermeer is not a good goalie. What it may mean is that he is not the right goalie for Ajax. He could be the type of goalie that is better on a team where he does get a lot of work.

Top sport is not about playing nice. Vermeer may just have had a bad game. It happens to the best. Still, if I had to judge him on that one performance, I wouldn't call it just bad. Based on the specific Ajax criteria that I outlined, he was shockingly bad. Unfortunately, it happened while Ajax played surprisingly good.

I take a somewhat more negative approach towards what happened last night. Yes, it is nice to think that this game is something to build on. And I hope that happens. But the outcome of the game itself may have been crucial in the building process. I was just reading up the other day on horses, in relation to betting. An almost certain way to break the winning spirit of an up-and-coming horse is to introduce it into a pasture where other, superior horses will assign it a lower place in the pecking order. The horse 'politely' adjusts to this, and suddenly can't win another race. I had this in mind when I watched some of the young players last night. Were they able to play the Ajax way because they didn't know any better? They didn't know the spirit of the team they were injected into. But now that Ajax has nothing left to play for (in the words of Suarez...), I'm afraid that they will find out. A win last night would have been huge. Now it remains to be seen who will tilt the balance. The new players towards the positive side and Ajax style. Or the older players towards the poor execution we have seen too much of.

Considering the missed opportunity, and the new challenge (of playing well with nothing to play for), Vermeer's performance was extra painful. That, right there, was the chance for Ajax to get out of the negative spiral...

bingo!!

it was not just one bad game, either

vermeer let the team down, they should have easily advanced from this tie

[Kowalczyk]

We wouldn't even have been in this round if it wasn't for Kenneth Vermeer... Very unfair, this.

Total, utter and complete bollocks to pick one Ajax player and strangle him like this, after what was arguably the best performance of the season.

K.

[bluedaddy19]

And to say he's single-handedly responsible for this result is ridiculous.

l'OM scored 4 goals over 210 minutes of the tie, and he should have stopped 3 of them

as noted he had very little to do last night

[bluedaddy19]

We wouldn't even have been in this round if it wasn't for Kenneth Vermeer... Very unfair, this.

hmmm, that is a far bigger stretch than blaming him for allowing 3 obviously soft goals

and i never said each goal was 100% his fault, i said they all SHOULD have been stopped and they should have

there is no getting around the fact that vermeer looked like a flapper 3 times of 4 goals - heck, i see MORE people taking the axe to stek in this thread, and he didn't play! i find stek is always overcriticized, but somehow vermeer is overpraised, when he so clearly is not ready to be a #1 in big games

yes, the team was fantastic (apart from bruno silva and our suddenly wretched restart serves) and I'm happy for that... but its not enough anymore after 4+ years of looking up at psv

we needed this game and this tie and we deserved to win

i'll tell you what, though: i can always stop being furious with vermeer, and make it about marco's insipid decision

yes i am very mad, but i paid my 27E and i wore my colors and i sang my face off, so i'm allowed to be

[Philippe]

First of all, it was our best performance of the season. Ajax played like Ajax again. We had incredible ball possession, created chances, and scored nice goals. But we missed Vermaelen. Too bad we did not play like this on the away game. Congratulations to the players and coach.
I have to add, sorry Ko, that for the third time in a row Vermeer played a very poor game, and if I had to chose, I certainly would put Stekelenburg back in the basis. OM’s goalie made a decisive save, and ours none. That makes the result in their favor.
But for one evening, Ajax were Ajax again. We have to go on like this.

[Rubin Stark]

Would Vermeer come in for so much criticism if he were white?

If we want to talk about let-downs, why not mention the ability of Suarez to miss clear-cut chances? Time and time again this happens.