Opta Joe is always pretty funny

Bad from Ajax and it's actually hard not to think along the lines of classic men against boys reasons.

Rostov players consistently seemed stronger or just bigger, and worse kept outworking many of the Ajax players. The duel ball phases that ideally Ajax through great tactics and great technique wants to avoid, were not avoided, and seemed like they were dominated by the Rostov players.

In possession for Ajax the biggest problem looked like unbalance and wrong distances between various of the central midfielders and the players ahead of them. Klaassen in the debated attacking midfielder role, which really did look like second-striker (too) much of time struggled to get involved at all.

On the right-wing El Ghazi was hopeless and didn't manage to do anything. I believe he was simply getting outworked. Younes on the left showed a few signs of the terror he can be with his lightning dribble-turns but he also struggled to get open and was put on a lot of pressure the other way by 35 year old Belarus ironman right-wing-back Kalachev.

Traore against a packed centre tried to be mobile and find space but passes never really found him and maybe this particular game called for more back to the goal contributions, which would have probably been impossible for him anyway unless the whole team worked much better in all kinds of different ways.

On the pure defensive side of things you expect more from widely highly regarded talent like Riedewald and Bazoer. They seemed too weak in this game. Veltman I'm surprised isn't sold yet, and maybe it's worrying that he isn't.

It's not like I knew about their new defender Davinson Sánchez before seeing him in the final stages of the Libertadores, but he definitely seems like someone that could have resisted the Rostov players better than what took place here.

The Ajax fullbacks who I guess COULD have created some width and advantageous situations by coming forward didn't seem to be much of a helpful factor either.

For Rostov in midfield I almost can't say enough good things about Christian Noboa. He is someone I had kind of forgotten since the time, several years ago now, that he was an important player for Ruben Kazan back when they were a European fixture, but recently I've been really impressed with him in the last couple of Copa Americas. Heck, Ecuador is tied for the lead in World Cup qualification which I'm sure that he also has a lot to do with. He is seriously a standout on this team doing everything the best and well.

He is 31 with a long career in Russian football, probably with pretty good pay, so time is running out, but I kinda hope that we could see him for a team in one of the best leagues. Short term he could help a lot of teams.

Up front the biggest emerging football superstar from Iran since Ali Daei (and maybe Ali Karimi), SARDAR Azmoun, more than deserve to be mentioned. By many accounts he is rapidly getting better and better and he certainly looked the striker-part in this game. He is already an experienced 21 year old and it's pretty exciting to see if he can also impress against the best in the Champions League.

in the first leg rostov was the definition of parking the bus so I didn't see anything from them. I missed yesterday's debacle by Ajax. What a fall from grace that club has had post-Bosman Ruling.

15k would be pretty good for a reserve team game tbqh

Good analysis Bjørn. There are a couple of deficiencies in the Ajax squad that seem obvious to everyone except those in charge.. Klaassen routinely plays more as a second striker than as a midfielder. He did this under De Boer and under Bosz is just continuing to make the same errors.

Our wing backs, which are pretty essential to attacking football these days, are Tete and Dijks (who was injured yesterday). Both are strong defensively but don't add much in attack.

Age-wise the squad seems completely unbalanced. Lots of youngsters of course, but little experience. Whenever Ajax look to buy experience, they focus on over-the-hill players the wrong side of thirty, rather than just some solid players in the 26-31 age range to balance out the squad. This transfer window was exemplary of that, buying two Colombian youngsters who I'm sure will do well in a year or two and then be sold as soon as they've excelled for half a season and Westermann, who was brought in for experience but simply lacks quality.

I don't see it changing any time soon as long as Overmars is there, who is absolutely clueless. The only good thing about him is that he's mostly unwilling to spend, so at least he isn't squandering the little money we have on crap.

should also add that Ajax is off to a subpar start domestically

I'm not worried about those points, I'd gladly have signed for -5 points after 3 games if that would mean that the absolutely oblivious Overmars would wake up and realise the necessity for a really good creative midfielder(or winger). Ideally one who is old enough to be consistent but not over the hill, as Feral points out. We should have the money, and most definitely would have if we would have just sold Klaassen to Napoli which was reportedly possible for some ridiculous 15-20m figure.

Or perhaps it's better to adopt an entirely different system because Klaassen hasn't been playing (well) as a CM or even AM for months yet never gets benched because lolscorepoints and/or no alternatives. They can't see how broken the midfield has been since ~march. The DM + CM + CM doesn't work at all when the first, Gudelj, is a wanderer with Pirlo pretentions yet none of his class. He's said to provide the much needed defensive oomph but doesn't know an enemy counter attack when it hits him in the face, let alone how to break one up or prevent one.

Casually striding (and admittedly pretty epic) Bazoer has been looking injured-ish / plain lazy for months. Then 30 yards ahead there's some lazy ****er just waiting to tap the ball in the net being absolutely useless 95% of the time without the instructions to do so, I hope.


TL;DR or just bench Klaassen.

We've watched the trio of Bazoer, Gudelj and Klaassen fail for a while now yet they still start every game. But of course, all the alternatives are 19 ****ing years old. Yet we don't need any strengthening, according to Overmars. It is infuriating.

Group Stage draw in ~30 minutes.

At least the CEREMONY starts then.

lets gooooooooooooo

why cant uefa get hosts who can actually speak english. this is painful to listen.

Someone poast the groups as they happen plz gotta get back to WORK

lmfao ian rush couldnt get the ball open lolplop

He started cracking it like it was an egg or something. Amazing

the guy next to him is still trying to hold his laughter

Loooooooooool he keeps doing it. What in the hell is he doing

HAHAAHAHHA AGAIN

An hour to pull 32 balls out the bag.

Oh and here's a break.

Wtf

Would like to face Ze Germans or Dutch this time around.

And if they were gonna sub a presenter they should do it on performance. Obv Rush should have be benched.

buyern and atletico in the same group
barca and city in the same group

PSG/Arsenal
Benfica/Napoli
Barcelona/Man City
Bayern Munich/Atletico
CSKA Moscow/Bayer Leverkusen
Real Madrid/Dortmund
Leicester/Porto
Juventus/Sevilla

Ugh ****

need to fade real/dortmund and buyern/atletico