About twenty minutes into the second half between AZ and PSV, PSV midfielder Jerdy Schouten plays a high ball with his foot onto the head of teammate Joey Veerman. The Volendammer controlled the ball back to Schouten, who in turn played the ball back with a soft tap. A kind of rondo, featuring AZ midfielders. AZ trendsetter Kees Smit is irritated by it, he says after the match, which PSV wins 1-5 and as a result AZ has to repel an attack on the top two (PSV and Feyenoord) for the time being. Smit: “At one point they just started playing foot volleyball with us.”
Many eyes were focused on Smit in advance, who has shown his great potential more and more consistently in recent weeks. The cheerful-looking Heiloon resident recently prevailed against Ajax in the Johan Cruijff Arena. Each time he seemed to have more time than the rest and dribbled past his opponents with short foot movements. At the age of nine, Smit was the youngest player ever to enter the youth academy of AZ, the lifeline of the Alkmaarders. And perhaps Smit, player of the tournament at the European Under-19 Championship last summer, will be the best of all those youth players.
Yet it is not Smit, but former AZ player Guus Til – also from the Alkmaar youth academy – who takes the leading role on Sunday afternoon in a sunny Alkmaar. He is active, good on the ball, and scores three goals for the Eindhoven team. Started as an occasional striker, out of necessity due to injuries to Ricardo Pepi and Myron Boadu, he is now also important with goals as the deepest attacker of the Eindhoven team.
Lightning rod
Til’s first shot in hard after fifteen minutes, only for keeper Owusu-Oduro from a low cross from Ismael Saibari. It is the second goal for PSV, which has already taken the lead in the fifth minute through Mauro Júnior. Til’s best moment follows in minute 28, when, after a deep ball from Mauro Júnior, he rounds AZ defender Wouter Goes, takes the ball with control and shoots cleanly. “We say to other players: ‘he will travel around the world’,” says PSV coach Peter Bosz afterwards.
In recent weeks, as a striker – a position where, he remembers, he last played as a 17-year-old youth player – Til was mainly a lightning rod, effacing himself for an excellent Saibari. But his role as a finisher seems to suit him perfectly in Alkmaar. And, he says afterwards, “as a number nine I am actually a number ten more often.”
At one point they just started playing foot volleyball with us
Til’s scoring drive proves that there is no need for Peter Bosz to separate the attacking duo Til and Saibari for the time being. Only Pepi will look at that with mixed feelings. In his third season, the American is eager to become PSV’s first striker, but since Saibari and Til formed an attacking duo, the engine at PSV has started turning. But, Bosz told ESPN before the match: “Pepi is my first striker in the long term. But he has to be fully fit. He understands that.”
On the Alkmaar side, the quick, large deficit in the first half led to irritation, on the field and in the stands. With convincing attacking play, AZ managed to beat Ajax 2-0 in the Johan Cruijff Arena and at home against Feyenoord (3-3), the Alkmaarders came back from behind, but against PSV AZ had no chance in the first half hour. AZ also hoped to be able to beat PSV, but partly due to a late Thursday evening match against Crystal Palace, which meant that AZ had two days less rest than PSV, this was almost impossible.
AZ’s 1-3, a long shot by Sven Mijnans, came out of the blue, but it was a prelude to a period in which PSV was sloppy with the ball and AZ became more dangerous. That should lead to a goal just before half-time, but AZ right winger Weslley Patati finally shoots over the ball in front of an open goal.
Smit also cannot distinguish himself at AZ. He scans, drops, turns and usually plays cleanly into his teammates, but has no decisive passes or dribbles. As a team, AZ started brightly in the second half, but an individual error by starting debutant Kasper Boogaard ultimately led to PSV’s 1-4, shot in by Veerman. Any hope for a good result for the Alkmaarders has finally disappeared.
Pepi doesn’t cheer
At PSV, Pepi comes on twenty minutes before the end. The fact that the American wants to score his goal becomes clear when he stands cold in the field with two AZ players in front of him and goes for his own success, while Til is completely free. When Til, of all people, heads in the 1-5 just before the end, almost the entire team comes to him to celebrate his hat trick. Only not Pepi, who immediately trudges back to his own half with his head bowed.
Afterwards, Til says he enjoyed the game of his team, and as a striker. “But as long as I play, I think it’s all fine.”
After the match, Smit is realistic about his own game and that of AZ. “After the break we had a phase where we were a little better with the ball.” But he also says: “They were five times better than us today.”
Because Feyenoord lost 2-1 to Go Ahead Eagles later on Sunday evening, PSV took over the top position in the Premier League from the Rotterdam team.
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