“It’s not a nice feeling,” says Tijjani Reijnders about the defeat of AZ on a visit to Apollon Limassol (1-0). The AZ midfielder thought that his team was sloppy in Cyprus and that the Alkmaarders followed the ball a lot. “And then it’s hard tonight.”
“We were sloppy, too slow in pace and gave away a goal through a restart. We don’t really create opportunities ourselves,” Reijnders analyzes at ESPN after the game. “They were comfortable on the ball and I think we gave them too much time in that. So they could play under it and we had to walk back and forth.”
Since the beginning of August, AZ has been playing three matches a week. Because it played early in the preliminaries, it has already played nineteen official games. “It is an intensive program. We train for that and we play for that.”
Lately, leader AZ has mainly been praised for playing as a team. Apollon Limassol managed to disrupt the team of trainer Pascal Jansen in such a way that AZ did not get to play its own game. “We were not ourselves”, Reijnders continues. “We were sloppy and created too little. It’s a difficult pot and then we lose to ourselves. I think they made it difficult for us too.”
The top match against Feyenoord awaits for AZ next Sunday. The match starts at 4.45 pm in Alkmaar. Flashes of the duel can be followed in the radio broadcast of NH Sport.