Ajax should have been in the quarterfinals of the Champions League with one, according to Valentijn Driessen of De Telegraaf. The team from Amsterdam had the match against Benfica in their hands, but eventually gave it away. The Portuguese came back to 2-2 and so everything is still open.

‘Ajax missed an opportunity to finish the job here in advance. If it is 1-2 at halftime, where it should have been 1-4,” the reporter judges. ‘Then you expect Ajax to get more space in the second half, but that has not been used. Ajax did not play the game they normally play. They went along in Benfica’s fighting football and that suits them better now.’

“You have to worry, because Benfica is a team that can score out of nowhere. And they can too’, continues the critical Driessen. ‘The match in Amsterdam should have been a formality. That’s not it. Ajax has got itself into trouble with this. Now it will be a great evening in Amsterdam, but then you have to win.’

Incidentally, Driessen is not of the opinion that Benfica has thrown sand in the eyes of the club from Amsterdam. ‘I think Ajax has it all to itself. If you put all Benfica players on an overview, there is not a single player who would put Erik ten Hag in his first eleven at Ajax. I think Rafa Silva is a good attacker, maybe that’s the only one. But do you have to exchange it for Antony, who was on a roll in the first half? I do not think so.’

Ajax changes late

Erik ten Hag only started to switch late on Wednesday and had visibly troubled that several times. “You saw that Daley Blind was having a lot of trouble. It was his record game, but he was having a lot of trouble with it. I thought that more players were ready for a substitution. Those changes quite late. Gravenberch just couldn’t take it anymore. That is not so strange, because he played from the beginning for the first time after his corona infection.’