After four minutes and sixteen seconds of walking, Feyenoord striker Ayase Ueda starts moving for the first time. He senses his moment coming: a long kick from behind, an opponent who wants to head the ball away but completely misjudges the pass. Before it even happens, Ueda has already turned around, confident that his assessment is correct. Without looking back, he runs towards the FC Twente goal, in pursuit of his nineteenth goal.
It turns out to be the right choice. The Twente central defender Ruud Nijstad jumps, but goes under the ball. Linemate Stav Lemkin tries to clear, but he is surprised by the oncoming attacker. For a moment, Ueda seems to be on his way to the goal alone, then he loses balance due to mutual pulling with Lemkin. The pair falls, the threat is gone.
Ueda (27) is still the undisputed top scorer in the Eredivisie. With eighteen goals, after 24 rounds he towers above the first pursuers, Mika Godts of Ajax and Troy Parrott of AZ (both thirteen). Based solely on those totals, any coach would probably deploy him at the point of attack. However, those totals do not tell everything: Ueda is also a top scorer who has not scored for weeks.
How different it was in the first months of this football season. He was a threat in almost every match, helping his team to small victories over Excelsior, Fortuna Sittard, FC Groningen, FC Twente and FC Volendam. The Japanese even scored four goals against PEC Zwolle (6-1) at the beginning of December and provided a cross for a fifth. Eighteen goals in fifteen rounds: only two others have done it before him in the Eredivisie this century.
But since that first week of December, very little has suddenly worked for Ueda. He missed two matches due to minor injuries, and did not score in the other seven. It is a crisis of form just as sudden as that of Feyenoord itself, which lost its leading position after the defeat against PSV this autumn and then saw the Eindhoven team quickly disappear from view. Due to the 2-0 defeat at FC Twente on Sunday, the deficit is now 17 points.
Virtually invisible
Without the pressure from opponents, Ueda proves to be flawless. In the warm-up he shoots one ball after another past his team’s reserve keepers. But once in match uniform, that changes and Ueda is virtually invisible. In the first phase, his contribution is limited to that one sprint and a few head duels. Rarely does he move faster than a careful dribble, designed to close the passing line between goalkeeper and defenders.
The fact that he no longer scores is not just a matter of bad luck – shots on the post, unimaginable saves. Because the fact is that Ueda has simply been much less threatening since the match against PEC than earlier this season. Based on the quality of his attempts, the chance that he will score in a match is halved, data agency Opta calculates. That is also because his shots often go wide or over: only last week did he shoot on target again for the first time this calendar year.
What is also striking is that Ueda is much less likely to find himself in promising positions. Per match, he received the ball in the opposing penalty area 8.3 times per 90 minutes until the beginning of December, since then this has dropped by a quarter. And he rarely gets a shot in or on the edge of the five-meter area, the place where he scored many of his eighteen goals.
I’ve also experienced it myself where I didn’t score a goal for ten or eleven games
Yet Feyenoord coach Robin van Persie sees no reason to reconsider his choice for Ueda for the time being. “I have also experienced it myself that I did not score a goal for ten or eleven games,” the former top striker said in a press conference on Friday. “It’s fun, because as a striker you want to be important.” The problem is also that Ueda has not been completely fresh for weeks, according to Van Persie. “But he came close a few times in recent weeks. I am confident that it will happen.”
The match against FC Twente will not be that turning point. Ueda only gets the ball 18 times, in almost all cases far from the opponent’s goal. The times that Feyenoord manages to break through the flanks, the cross ends up behind the Japanese striker, or goes high over him. And the two times he is able to receive a ball near the penalty area, he is easily pushed aside by a defender, once resulting in a good chance for FC Twente from the transition.
The second half has just started when Van Persie warms up a handful of substitutes. Among them is Casper Tengstedt, second choice in the striker behind Ueda, and this week he was still accurate in a practice match against KSC Lokeren. Feyenoord is already 1-0 behind, after a quick breakout from FC Twente just before half time, rounded off with a long shot from Kristian Hlynsson.
It takes another ten minutes before the actual procedure takes place. After 61 minutes the board goes up: number 9 out, number 17 in. No nineteenth goal this week either.
Ayase Ueda loses a header duel against FC Twente defender Mats Rots.
Photo Vincent Jannink / ANP
