NOS Football•
Shortly after the blistering home defeat against Excelsior, resignation prevailed at Ajax. The Amsterdam club was dealt another blow in its own Johan Cruijff Arena, the umpteenth in recent months.
Asked if this was the worst match yet, Kenneth Taylor sighs deeply. “That could be possible,” says the midfielder. “I don’t have all the matches in mind at the moment, but the fact that we put this on the mat today is very disappointing.”
“I can very well imagine that supporters are ashamed of this result,” says interim coach Fred Grim. “That makes sense. This will have to be improved.”
Only 1964 was a worse year
Ajax lost a home match against Excelsior for the first time in club history and is therefore in danger of sinking further in the Premier League rankings. If all results on Sunday are bad, Ajax will be in seventh place after this weekend.
The gap to leader PSV has increased to fourteen points. Ajax is currently closer to last place: that gap is eleven points.
In total, it was Ajax’s fourteenth defeat of the calendar year in an official match. That is as much as in the disaster year of 2023. The only year in the club’s history in which the Amsterdam team lost more often was in 1964 (seventeen times).
“Given the situation we are in, we especially need confidence,” says Grim, who has been representing the group since the beginning of this month as successor to the dismissed John Heitinga. To add with a sense of understatement: “A win could help with that.”
Grim has entered the history books in a negative way. In the previous round he already lost with Ajax at FC Utrecht (2-1), making him now the second Ajax coach ever to lose his first two matches, after Danny Blind in 2005.
“I must honestly say that I am not working on those kinds of records,” Grim responds stoically at the press conference afterwards. “I knew that this would be a difficult job that I had to put my shoulders to the wheel, so that’s what I’m going to do. I certainly don’t regret taking the job.”
Amazement at Excelsior
While resignation and disappointment predominate at Ajax, opponents Excelsior are mainly surprised. “We enjoyed the first half,” coach Ruben den Uil said afterwards with a smile. “Plenty of opportunities to play football, we could have created even more.”
Afterwards, Noah Naujoks, scorer of both Excelsior goals in the Johan Cruijff Arena, is still amazed at the space he was given to score his first goal. He was allowed to move far from midfield and then shoot freely.
“I didn’t actually come across anyone, so I thought on the edge of the sixteen: I’ll take a swing,” Naujoks describes his goal. “It wasn’t made very difficult for me, no.”
View the summary of Ajax-Excelsior
