According to Mike Verweij, Ajax’s medical staff received “shocking figures” from the KNVB last season about the fitness of the players who were part of the selection of the Dutch national team. On the conditional level, trainer Maurice Steijn can therefore make “great gains”, according to Verweij.
The figures that the Orange staff sent to Amsterdam showed “that the Feyenoord players in the Dutch national team were much fitter than the Ajax players”, Verweij writes in the newspaper on Wednesday morning. The new trainer Maurice Steijn would therefore bet on catching up in that area: “Conditionally, therefore, the whip is about at Ajax”, it reads. “And against Shakhtar, that cautiously seemed to be paying off.”
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In the duel with the champion of Ukraine, Ajax made a good impression, especially in the first half. After a hesitant start, Steijn’s team scored three times between the eighteenth and the 32nd minute, so that the 3-0 final score was on the board after just over half an hour. Steven Bergwijn’s 2-0 was especially nice: the winger was the end station of an attack that started with high pressure from, among others, acquisition Benjamin Tahirovic. Via Davy Klaassen, Branco van den Boomen and Mohammed Kudus, the ball finally reached the feet of Bergwijn after a transfer from Christian Rasmussen, who shot in convincingly.
Acquisitions Tahirovic and Van den Boomen seem to add something to Ajax’s game, according to Verweij. “The Bosnian put good pressure before the 2-0 and made a more than reasonable impression,” said the club watcher. “But Branco van den Boomen made the most impression. The strong playing midfielder showed that after his stay at Toulouse he no longer resembles the player who left Jong Ajax in 2014,” writes Verweij.
