Opponent in the Spotlight: Feyenoord

Opponent in the Spotlight: Feyenoord

09/19/2014

Ajax will play against Feyenoord Sunday at 14:30.

Ajax and Feyenoord played up till now 175 official matches. Feyenoord is the club Ajax played against the most, with PSV a distant second with 149 confrontations. Ajax won 79 times, played a draw 42 times and lost 54.

Last season Ajax won both away and at home with 2-1 from Feyenoord. In between Ajax beat Feyenoord for the Dutch Cup with 3-1.

The rivalry between Ajax and Feyenoord goes back to the period between season 1921-22 until season 1938-39. Ajax and Feyenoord were the exponents of a newer generation of soccer clubs. At first not taken seriously by traditional clubs like HFC, HBS en HVV, but after Ajax became the domestic champion in seasons 1917-18 and 1918-19 and Feyenoord in season 1923-24, it was clear that there was a new era in soccer and the popular clubs were a serious threat to the old establishment. During that period, Ajax and Feyenoord not only met 7 seasons in the division competition, but also 6 seasons in the champions competition and one time in the semi final of the Dutch Cup.

There have been many memorable meetings between Ajax and Feyenoord. A special match for me was the 2-4 win on October 22, 1995. It was the 10th round in the Eredivisie and uptil then Ajax had not yet gotten any goal against. After winning the champions league in the previous season, Ajax seemed unbeatable and mentally Ajax was very strong. Within 10 minutes in the game Feyenoord scored twice and was 2-0 ahead, but it seems both players and fans did not have any doubt about how this game would end and already before halftime Ajax had turned things around.

On average Ajax scores little over two goals per match against Feyenoord. Feyenoord scores little over 1.5 goals per match. In the history there has only be a 0-0 endresult once.
Sjaak Swart is the topscorer for Ajax against Feyenoord with 18 goals (in 35! matches). Both very impressive numbers. The fact that Sjaak Swart is topscorer is in large part due to his large amount of matches, as there are several players that have a better goal average with less games, such as Piet van Reenen (13 in 14), Jari Litmanen (12 in 13), Ruud Geels (10 in 8), Marco van Basten (9 in 10) en Klaas-Jan Huntelaar (8 in 7).

From the current squad both Viktor Fischer and Kolbeinn Sigthorsson scored 3 goals in 3 matches.

From the current contract players at Feyenoord Khalid Boulahrouz and Ruben Schaken played a part of their youth at the Ajax youth academy. Goalkeeper Kenneth Vermeer recently left Ajax for Feyenoord, while also the goalkeepers Warner Hahn (currently on loan to Zwolle) and Ronald Graafland have a past with Ajax (although the latter was originally from the Feyenoord Youth academy). The contract of former Ajax player John Goossens at Feyenoord was recently terminated.

The new Ajax winger Anwar El-Ghazi briefly played in the Feyenoord youth before ending up at Ajax via Sparta.

In the past there have been many famous soccer players that played for both clubs, such as Johan Cruijff, Ronald Koeman and Wim Jansen.

It is up to Ajax, after the loss against Groningen, to start with a positive result in an away game again and at the same time make sure the gap with the leaders does not become too big.

Filed under: Feyenoord - Ajax 0 - 1 (9/21/2014)