Ajax claim KNVB Cup after 120 minutes and 16 penalties
1 (1) (1) - 1
(1) (0)
Ajax win penalty shoot-out: 7-8
KNVB Cup - Final
De Kuip, Rotterdam
Sunday, 06 May, 2007
On 22 May 1996 Edgar Davids missed a penalty for Ajax in
Rome - and it wasn't an unimportant one: Ajax's first in
the shoot-out of the Champions League final against Juventus in
Rome. Ajax lost the shoot-out: 2-4. Davids' miss
marked the start of Ajax's 2-4 collapse. The 'pitbull' of Louis
van Gaal's golden Ajax team knew that he would leave Ajax
for AC Milan that summer and would have given his
left arm for a more succesful last ball contact as an
Ajacied...
The decisive penalty: after 120
minutes of football and 16 spotkicks,
'good old' Edgar Davids gives Ajax the KNVB Cup [Photo:
Ajax.nl].
Almost eleven years later, on 06 May 2007, Edgar Davids once
again stepped forward for a penalty. This time it wasn't Rome
but Rotterdam. This time the goalkeeper wasn't Juventus'
Angelo Peruzzi but AZ's Khalid Sinouh. This time it wasn't the
first, but the 16th and possibly last of the
shoot-out. This time Louis van Gaal
wasn't Davids' coach, but his opponent. And...
this time Edgar Davids didn't fail: he made it 7-8, just
after AZ defender Ryan Donk had missed the 15th in a
long series of 16 near-perfect spotkicks, and gave Ajax
their 17th Dutch cup in club history. "This feels like a new
beginning," the Ajax veteran said after official ceremony
on the pitch of De Kuip.
Davids's penalty abruptly brought a long and
spectacular cup final day to an end. The ingredients:
17,000 AZ supporters, 15,000 Ajax supporters and two rival
teams that are still nursing their wounds
(received on matchday 34 of the Eredivisie) and
absolutely refused to lose two trophies in eight
days' time. The Dutch cup final of 2007 was a battle at a
sometimes unbelievable pace, with loads of physical
duels, angry pushing and pulling in the players' tunnel at
half-time, a red card (for Gabri in the last minute of
regulation), 30 minutes of extra time in which Ajax were about
to collapse and, eventually, a nerve-racking
series of penalties.
Was it a good game? Well... sometimes. It surely
wasn't in the first half. AZ and Ajax are known for their skill
and their passing game, but this encounter simply
went too fast for it. There was no time to think, no time for
accuracy. In the first 45 minutes, the cup final sometimes
seemed to be a game of foot volley, with two
teams volleying the ball back and forth without letting
it touch the ground. Ajax were particularly sloppy in the
opening phase - and it immediately cost them: the game had
hardly begun when Moussa Dembélé, one
of the Eredivisie's major revelations this season,
penetrated the Ajax defense from the right flank, shrugged
off Thomas Vermaelen (who didn't look very convincing there, to
say the least) and released a cracking left-footed shot
that beat Maarten Stekelenburg at the near post: 1-0,
as early as in the 4th minute.
Vermaelen is late,
Dembélé fires home: 1-0 AZ. [Photo:
Ajax.nl]
AZ were clearly the better side in the first half. The
Alkmaar outfit seemed better organized, more
determined and they were most definitely more threatening,
although major scoring chances were scarce. Ajax had to
thank heaven when referee Van Egmond didn't award
Simon Cziommer a penalty in the 13th minute. It
looked like John Heitinga brought the German
midfielder down without ever touching the ball, but Van Egmond
decided that the Ajacied didn't do anything wrong. In the 20th
minute Van Egmond once again failed to notice something
crucial. On an AZ corner kick defender Ryan Donk fumbled
the ball across the goal-line. The 'man in black' pointed
to the middle and AZ celebrated their second goal, but the
linesman had (correctly) noticed something Van Egmond
hadn't, namely that Donk gave the final push with his
arm. At half-time, Ajax couldn't complain.
Something had to change after the break - and it did. The
score, for starters. Ajax hardly gave their fans the time
to notice that they were going to change tack in the
second half: the equalizer was on the boards before the
Amsterdammers could even demonstrate their new zest.
Wesley Sneijder started an impressive run across field, slipped
past a few opponents and, exactly at the right moment,
tapped the ball to Klaas-Jan Huntelaar, whose dry first time
shot was unstoppable for Khalid Sinouh: 1-1 (50') - and Ajax
were back.
Ajax's goal marked the start of a phase of some 30
minutes in which Ajax finally managed to grab AZ by
the throat and impose their will on them. Just before the goal
of 'KJH', Ajax had already come close to scoring when
Sinouh couldn't hold on to a shot from George
Ogararu and AZ survived the ensueing scrimmage in the goalmouth
with a bit of fortune. In the 63rd minute Ryan Babel slipped
pas Grétar Steinsson and fired just wide of the top
corner. And in the 81st minute a fierce attempt from Edgar
Davids caramboled between Sinouh's fists and the
post. Around the 70th minute mark, in particular, a second
Ajax goal seemed close.
But Ajax didn't score in the only phase in the game in
which they more or less deserved the lead and, as
the 90th minute came close, the two teams could
prepare for 30 minutes of extra time. Just before the final
whistle, however, Gabri did his team-mates an extremely bad
turn by very obviously hitting (or at least trying to hit) Demy
de Zeeuw. The Spaniard fully deserved the red card that referee
Van Egmond showed him. "Pretty daft," was Henk ten Cate's
reaction after the game - and Gabri himself was the first to
admit it. The midfielder apologized to his team-mates in the
dressing-room, which was surely made a lot easier by
the fact that the cup final had a happy ending for Ajax.
The bad news: Gabri was sent off directly, which means
that the suspension that will surely be handed to him
will ban him from matches in all KNVB
competitions, including the Eredivisie play-offs.
In the cup final itselft Ajax could already have paid
a high price for Gabri's stupidity. Exhausted and
down to ten men, the Amsterdammers were under extreme
pressure in extra time, especially the second fifteen
minutes. Julian Jenner came very close to giving AZ the
lead again (98'), substitute Danny Koevermans was denied twice
(once by Maarten Stekelenburg, once by a desperate tackle from
Jaap Stam) and 'good old' Shota Arveladze's diving header in
the 120th minute hit the cross-bar.
'Rush hour' in the Ajax
goalmouth: Ogararu and Stam come to rescue as
Danny Koevermans is about to knock Ajax out... [Photo:
Ajax.nl]
By this time, the 15,000 travelling Ajax were waving
thousands of white T-shirts over their heads as one man,
singing at the top of their lungs, creating an impressive wall
of noise that encouraged the Ajacieden to squeeze the
last teaspoon of adrenaline out of their bodies and defend the
Alamo that was Maarten Stekelenburg's penalty area. In 30
minutes of extra time Ajax never escaped from the pressure. It
was totally obvious that pennos were now the only road to
triumph.
Even from the spot AZ and Ajax didn't budge an inch. Did
someone say that Dutch teams can't take
penalties...? Goalkeepers Stekelenburg and Sinouh could
never even get a finger to the guided missiles that
whizzed past them. Henk ten Cate sent two ex-AZ men forward
(Perez and Lindenbergh); Louis van Gaal picked two ex-Ajax boys
(Boukhari and De Cler). The experienced ones did their jobs
(Perez, Arveladze), but so did the youngsters (Vermaelen and De
Mul for Ajax; Dembélé and Jenner for AZ). Until
it was Ryan Donk's turn. It was beautiful to see
how the entire AZ team team took pity on the young
defender after Maarten Stekelenburg had managed to
get a hand behind Donk's attempt (which wasn't even
poor, actually...). Seconds later it was all over for Holland's
most entertaining football team, who seemed on their way to the
'double' but stumbled twice in Rotterdam in eight days' time:
first at Woudestein (home of Excelsior), then at De Kuip,
where a massive banner on the second tier of the Ajax
end underscored the painful truth in rhyme: "VAN GAAL: GEEN
BEKER, GEEN SCHAAL" ('Van Gaal: no cup and no shield').
Painful but true.
Captain Jaap Stam lifts Ajax's
17th KNVB Cup. [Photo: Ajax.nl]
As for Ajax: Henk ten Cate was honest enough to admit that
the "most fortunate team won today". Ajax do finish
the season with a trophy and will present it to their fans at
Amsterdam's Museumplein on Monday evening. But let's be honest:
this cup triumph can only ease the pain a little bit and
is not enough to forget about the 'Nightmare of
Tilburg'. Ajax won't receive a piece of silverware for
winning the post-season play-offs, but in modern football there
is no place for romanticism: the upcoming games against
Heerenveen are, financially, of far greater importance
than the Dutch cup. Ajax can hardly afford to miss out on
Champions League football for another season. More than
anything else the winning of the KNVB Cup is something that
will give the team a much-needed confidence boost for the
play-offs.
One last detail: why didn't the great Jaap
Stam, Ajax veteran and captain, come forward for a
penalty...? Stam was honest about it: he's not really
keen on penalties. "The last one I took was after Holland vs
Italy at Euro 2000. That ball is probably still floating
around in the stratosphere." (MP)
GOALS
- 04' 1-0 Moussa
Dembélé
- 50' 1-1 Klaas-Jan Huntelaar
PENALTY SHOOT-OUT
- 1-0 Shota Arveladze
- 1-1 Kenneth Perez
- 2-1 Nourdin Boukhari
- 2-2 Klaas-Jan Huntelaar
- 3-2 Grétar Steinsson
- 3-3 Thomas Vermaelen
- 4-3 Tim de Cler
- 4-4 Olaf Lindenbergh
- 5-4 Julian Jenner
-
5-5 John Heitinga
- 6-5 Moussa Dembélé
-
6-6 Tom De Mul
- 7-6 Rogier Molhoek
-
7-7 George Ogararu
- 7-7 Ryan Donk (MISSED)
- 7-8 Edgar Davids
Referee: Van Egmond
Yellow cards: Sneijder, Huntelaar,
Heitinga (Ajax)
Red card: Gabri (Ajax, 90')
Attendance: 35,000
Ajax line-up: Stekelenburg; Ogararu,
Stam, Vermaelen, Emanuelson (76. De Mul); Gabri,
Heitinga, Sneijder (87. Perez), Davids; Huntelaar,
Babel (120. Lindenbergh).
AZ line-up: Sinouh; Steinsson,
Jaliens, Donk, De Cler; Jenner, De Zeeuw (102. Molhoek),
Cziommer (71. Koevermans), Martens (65. Boukhari);
Dembélé, Arveladze.
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