Opponent in the Spotlight: Feyenoord

Opponent in the Spotlight: Feyenoord

11/07/2015

Ajax plays Sunday at 14:30 at home against Feyenoord.

Ajax and Feyenoord played 179 official matches against eachother. Ajax won 80 of these confrontations, played a draw 43 times and lost 55. This total is in Ajax favor, but that is not the case for each of the individual competition types Ajax and Feyenoord met. The balance in the Dutch Cup has been in Feyenoords favor since they eliminated Ajax earlier in the season and Feyenoord has clearly better results in the Champions competition.

Recently Feyenoord eliminated Ajax in the Dutch Cup (1-0). Last season the match in De Kuip ended in a 0-1 victory for Ajax, while later in the season the match in the ArenA ended in 0-0.

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 to win with 2-4.

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 been twice a 0-0 endresult, one of them last season.
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 Viktor Fischer has scored 3 goals in 4 matches and John Heitinga scored 2 goals in 10 matches.

From the current players at Feyenoord Kenneth Vermeer, Warner Hahn,Jan-Arie van der Heijden, Marko Vejinovic, Eljero Elia and Bilal Basacikoglu have a history at Ajax.

The Ajax winger Anwar El-Ghazi played briefly in the Feyenoord youth before going to Ajax, via Sparta.

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

Away matches in the Eredivisie is about the only thing Ajax still has good series. The last 3 away matches in the Eredivisie were won, the last 6 not lost, and in the last 14 Eredivisie away matches Ajax each time scored at least 1 goal. A win would extend all these series with one game and more importantly increase the gap to one of the main contenders for the title to 6 points.

Filed under: Feyenoord - Ajax 1 - 1 (11/8/2015)

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