Five Goals in Sittard, One Denial, and Amrabat's Tired Legs

In the 79th minute the scoreboard in Sittard turned over for the fifth time. A few hundred metres away, in a press room lit by tired yellow fluorescents, a man sat down in front of a microphone wearing the face of someone who had just escaped a bad week. The clock in Penang read 4:40 in the morning. I made my second coffee, reopened the recording, and heard what the scoreline did not say: a coach defending a decision before anyone had attacked it. Nobody asked him about the five goals. The first question was about the man who did not start. It is the kind of night people in football call a debt-paying night. A team loses a big match, goes away, wins heavily, and everything looks normal again. But normal is the most expensive thing in football. You only know you have it back when the questions in the press room stop mentioning the old defeat. In Sittard nobody mentioned PSV. They mentioned another name. Ajax travelled to Sittard after losing to PSV. Fortuna Sittard came into the match unbeaten in the Eredivisie this season. The final score was 1-5. In the press room, coach Míchel said his side had created many chances against a team with a good mentality, that the win mattered especially after the PSV defeat, and that winning the next match was what counted. The line-up contained Kasper Dolberg, who replaced Tolu Arokodare and scored. It contained Sofyan Amrabat, who had come off the bench against PSV and played the full 90 minutes in Sittard. And it did not contain Marcos Leonardo, the summer signing, who watched from the side. Placed side by side, those three names form a story a 5-1 scoreline cannot cover. A striker picked because, in the coach's words, this match suited Dolberg's qualities better. A midfielder pushed into the engine room who faded visibly late on, as the coach himself admitted. A summer signing who had to be publicly reassured in front of the cameras. I have sat through enough press conferences to know one thing: when a coach volunteers that something has absolutely nothing to do with the hierarchy, there is almost certainly a real competition for places inside the dressing room. Nobody builds a fence around an empty field. One more thing belongs at the wider level. The Eredivisie has run on a familiar axis in recent years: PSV and Ajax in the title tier, a group behind them chasing European places, and everyone else surviving by selling players. Fortuna Sittard belong to that last group. A club like that starts a season with an unbeaten run, then gets flattened 1-5 at home. There is nothing new under the sun, and precisely for that reason this match says less than people think. Ajax's striker position should be read as a tactical variable, not a personal ranking. Picking Dolberg for Sittard was a decision based on the opponent's profile. Leonardo, by implication in Míchel's answer, is a different type: a runner who accelerates into space behind a defensive line. Two people, two problems. A coach who picks his striker by opponent rather than by form is usually running a single-striker system with two contrasting alternatives — one who holds the ball up, one who runs in behind. The appearance of Arokodare as the man replaced tells another story: Ajax have three strikers competing for one starting slot. In the Eredivisie that is a depth most clubs do not have. But three men for one place, across a season with a domestic cup and European football, is a psychological problem rather than a technical one. And psychological problems are not solved by a scoreline. Amrabat, meanwhile, is in the middle of a process I have seen many times: the load-building phase for a newly arrived player. A substitute cameo against PSV, then a full 90 minutes a few days later, then the coach himself noting that in the last ten to fifteen minutes he was clearly more tired. That is the description of a shuttle midfielder, tasked with winning the ball, turning it over and covering ground. That kind of player cannot play three matches a week without someone sharing the load. For a club still facing a domestic cup and European football, this is the quiet kind of risk that never appears on a scoreboard but decides November and December. One thing I have to state plainly: I have no metric to verify the claim that many chances were created. No xG, no shot count, no PPDA, no possession share. Five goals are beautiful, but they are outcome, not process. A 5-1 win at the ground of a previously unbeaten side always reads like a statement; without process data, it is a statement that has not been signed. Based on my experience following matches in the Malaysian top flight and across European leagues in recent years, I always file wins like this under pending verification rather than under turning point. There is one more fact worth putting on the table: the hosts came into the match unbeaten. That makes the result look more impressive. It also means Ajax have just beaten a team never tested by defeat. In football, the unbeaten side is often the side that has not yet met the right opponent. Tonight they met one. The blind spot of European football media, and of us when we read them back, is treating a press conference as a statement of truth. In practice it is a tool of emotional management. Míchel's answer structure deserves close reading. Dolberg was explained with tactical reasoning. Leonardo was reassured with trust. Amrabat was honoured with mentality and experience. Three compliments, three different purposes, and all three pointing at one task: keeping the balance. People only hold a balance when they know there are heavy objects underneath. I once heard a coach tell me after a five-goal win that a big win is when he worries most, because nobody listens to him talk about the gaps anymore. That applies to Ajax tonight. Amrabat played the whole match and is tired. Ahead lie two home fixtures against Willem II and Excelsior — opponents the coaching staff, judging by how they speak, treat as must-win games. In football, the must-win tag costs far more than an away trip. In the summer of 2026 I stayed up all night in Penang to watch Germany collapse against South Korea, and wrote a piece about a downfall as a poem losing its rhythm. I learned something then: a result never equals a truth, it is only a moment. A 5-1 win is the same. It does not prove Ajax are back; it only proves Ajax still know how to beat teams below them. One more note on the transfer market, and it concerns Leonardo directly. Clubs like Fortuna Sittard survive by developing and selling, while clubs like Ajax buy ready-made and rotate. When a summer signing sits on the bench, the pressure does not stop at the stands. It comes from the agent, from the financial records, from a board that does not want its asset to lose value. Every contract is a promise, but football has never kept a promise. The question about Leonardo itself, arriving right after a 5-1 win, is the most notable fact of the whole press conference. It shows pressure strong enough that a coach had to deny it before it could take shape. The groundsman of a twelve-thousand-seat stadium in Sittard has never once been invited to the VIP seats. He cuts the grass, paints the lines, waters the pitch, and by Monday morning nobody remembers his name. Ajax will win more nights like this, and there will be more press conferences where one man has to use three different compliments to keep a dressing room still. At thirty-four, I have started to believe the thing that decides a season is not the nights of five goals. It is the third match of the week, when the legs are tired and someone has to choose between winning and keeping people. Ajax have just answered the first question. The second is still sitting there, waiting for two home games.