AZ proving their worth again in Europe while Heracles just flopped like pretty much every play-off winner. Time to ditch this useless addition to the league and just send the top 4 plus cupwinner.
I just read that AZ/Vlaar explains their Euro success by the accumulated experience. When they re-entered international football after many years at first it was considered like being on a school's foreign trip, fun. But when they reached very far that school trip attitude has never been back.
Luck probably has a lot to do with it as well. Hats off though. One of the few clubs doing any good for Dutch football.
I watched the last 5 minutes and xtra time and I'm baffled by the incompetence of our Dutch clubs to be mobile and moving in order to prevent easy defending by our opponents. If you stand still against the opponents box you make it simple for them. What's so difficult to understand about that.
Losing important players like Guardado, Hendrix, Willems, Locadia, V Ginkel, Lestienne and Bruma. And Cocu proving to be a bigger coward and worse coach than Frank de Boer. This pass map was before PSV starting kicking long balls into the box. Gee, why do they not create chances?
PSV are suffering from a lack of dynamic MFs. Guardado could make things happen. Propper and Ramselaar cannot. Bergwijn is a quicker version of el Ghazi, wanting to take on all defenders but not recognizing when he is getting himself boxed in. Clearly Cocu won the championship last year because de Boer totally lost it in the final games by not having his team ready to play. Coupled with the loss of the players JC-14 mentioned, it's no wonder they could not perform this year.
I think it's a bit unfair to compare Bergwijn to El Ghazi. He is far more talented. He's just young and figuring it out -- plus PSV has been playing like total crap and they aren't giving him a lot of options but to try and do things himself. Put him on Ajax at the moment and he would be looking much better IMO. He's better than Younes.
Ramselaar is actually a bit better than Propper when it comes to creativity & dynamism but he is not incisive enough for a 10, I think he goes deeper & becomes an 8. Funny same thing happened with Tonny (I saw him playing the 10 in the U-17 when they won the WC). More players are playing deeper because they just don't have the ability to be a top 10. I'd give Bergwijn another season before making a judgement, he has been disappointing thus far - Just being good at young levels (kindergarden levels) doesn't mean you'll be good at the top level.
Yup, hope they both make it into the Final. I was very impressed by the AZ showing against Zenith, especially because Zenith wasnot playing as an uniterested team. So I was very curious about how the match with Feyenoord would be, with expectations of a real test for Feyenoord. Both had to go deep in the EL match, so neither had an advantage over the other. Expected a thriller, but it became a walk over for Feyenoord and the only thing to criticize was not extending the goal difference with Ajax with another 4-5 goals. Very sloppy finishing. So I'm puzzled what happened to AZ in the last few days.
Ajax draw Legia Warsaw and AZ will play Olympique Lyon in the knockout round of the EL. Ajax 'should' handle the Polish team while AZ will have a tougher set of matches.