Woops, getting ahead of myself there. Feyenoord made a comback to 2-2. Congrats. And AZ only lost 1-0 so they have a chance of making it up at home.
Horrendous results, a dark day for Dutch football. They're all still having a chance though. Molde FK?? Seriously....
PSV doing well. 4-0 as we speak. Twente have a chance. 2-0 at home vs a mediocre team is doable. Heerenveen will have to win with 3 goals difference. Small chance
Chadli is probably out, will also miss the game on sunday. They're afraid he will be out for a long time. Heerenveen were very unlucky, not just because of the injury time 2nd goal but also because they missed quite a few chances. Score would've been different had they still have the 3 upfront from last season.
I watched the first half of Anzhi vs AZ before switching over to Molde vs Heerenveen. AZ had a decent performance and probably should have scored if only one of their crosses from wide areas found Altidore. A 1-0 loss is not a disaster. Anzhi eliminated Vitesse in previous round and I want AZ to progress to boost the coefficient rankings. Molde won their league title for the first time in their history and coincidentally, they were celebrating centenary last year. Their prodigal son Ole Gunnar Solskjaer (who left Molde in 90s to become a Man Utd legend) had offer from Aston Villa but chose to continue with Molde. They nearly got qualified for CL but missed a penalty in last minute against FC Basel (who qualified to CL knockouts last season ahead of Man Utd from same group) and got thrown into Europa League. Not all hope is lost for Heerenveen though. If I remember right, they won 4-0 at home in their previous qualifier. A repeat of that performance should do them good. I haven't watched Feyenoord match but I heard they dominated yet again without converting that to a win. I thought they were unlucky against Dynamo Kyiv in CL qualifier and I hope they do enough in 2nd leg of this Europa League qualifier to progress.
I'm greatly looking forward to your comments following Ajax CL games. But thanks for singling out Twente. You really are more worried about us than about anyone else aren't you.
Looks like the weaker teams in the eredivisie this season so far are weaker than they were last season. Apart from RKC no-one's putting up a real fight which is a shame. AZ seem to have a similar problem to last season: they have no plan B when they don't score quickly. To see them with five minutes left on the clock still trying to play tiki-taka... On that note one of the players that's impressing me is Djuricic at Heerenveen. Proper footballer!
I'm surprised by Reijnen from AZ in the game I saw for the biggest part today. Did almost everything right. Came from Zwolle last in 2010/2011 but did not play 1 game for AZ in Eredivisie that season. Last season little over 1100 minutes. Now has to step in for Moisander and is doing fine by the looks of it.
AZ have good scouts that's for certain. I'd like to see more of that, eredivisie clubs picking up Dutch players from the second division. Often turns out well too.
I really hope some of the clubs are able to turn around results in the 2nd legs of the playoffs. I will say I was super happy to see 3 Dutch league matches televised this past weekend on ESPN Deportes. I think it might have something to do with La Liga and Serie A going over to BeIn sports channel. I don't expect it every weekend but more than just 1 match per weekend here and there would be cool.
Has anyone ever tried this? It's paid live streaming for all Eredivisie matches for people outside of the Netherlands for €6 per month. http://www.eredivisie.livesport.tv/home
Same here thanks to BTV802 It's pretty awesome albeit not flawless. Barely notice the $11 coming out of my checking.
People outside Netherlands might prefer to use online streaming links (which cost nothing) rather than paying 6 Euros per month to watch on Eredivisie Live website :|
^ streams are of variable quality and certainly cannot be viewed at the full screen level on my computer. Lots of dropouts during matches. I'm holding my powder on getting Eredivisie Live to see what ESPN-3 does this year now that they have lost the Spanish and Italian games.
I finally upgraded my cable to include ESPN Deportes. Hopefully I'll be able to see a Willem II match or two. Although, I suspect the only time I'll be seeing them is when the go to Amsterdam or Eindhoven for a beat-down.
Yeah, when ESPN Deportes was showing one match a weekend, you could guess it was the big match of the weekend although PSV used to be the one most on it in the past. This past weekend, they televised the Ajax, PSV Eindhoven, and Feyenoord matches. I know they have at least the PSV vs AZ match this weekend.
Supporters of FC Twente won't be happy but ESPN Deportes yet again is showing back to back to back Eredivisie matches this Sunday morning!!!! This is (EST) time wise. Vitesse vs. Feyenoord 6:25am PSV Eindhoven vs. AZ Alkmaar 8:25am Heerenveen vs. Ajax 10:25 am