{"id":771,"date":"2006-04-16T10:55:00","date_gmt":"2006-04-16T10:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/maddruid.com\/wp\/?p=771"},"modified":"2006-10-09T20:01:01","modified_gmt":"2006-10-09T12:01:01","slug":"769-of-ajax-is-off-to-the-playoff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/?p=771","title":{"rendered":"[769] Of Ajax is off to the playoff!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ajax Amsterdam (tag)<\/a> has confirmed a place in the playoff for the second Dutch slot for next season’s Champions’ League. In last league game against RKC Waalwijk Ajax won 4 to 2<\/a>, hence guaranteeing fourth place.<\/p>\n

I’m still unclear whether Ajax will face Feyenoord or AZ but either way, Ajax will be facing a rival. Yes. You heard that right. For ages, there were the Big Three – Ajax, Feyenoord and PSV. With AZ, it’s becoming a Big Four instead and AZ has a real grudge against Ajax. Well, just it’s Chairman Dirk Schering. But he does really<\/em> hates Ajax<\/a>. And that rivalry has gone off the pitch.<\/p>\n

Ajax’s Technical Director Martin van Geel has been handed a 5-year stadium ban<\/a>. That means van Geel can’t be at AZ’s homeground. It’s ridiculous – even the Dutch soccer association, the KNVB commented on it:<\/p>\n

KNVB director Henk Kesler has made crystal clear how he feels about the incident in today’s issue of De Telegraaf: “I was in my car when I heard about the stadium ban for Van Geel and I laughed so loud I almost crashed into a lamppost. For a second I thought it was an April Fool’s Day joke, but it’s a bit late for that. It is pretty absurd for a football club to hand a stadium ban to the technical director of another club. Was Martin van Geel involved in criminal activities for which a ban would normally be appropriate? This makes no sense whatsoever and Mr Scheringa is making a complete fool out of himself. Perhaps we should hand him a stadium ban for the remaining 37 stadiums in Dutch professional football.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Regardless, it shows that this little rivalry is brewing up.<\/p>\n

For the record, van Geel was AZ’s TD before he joins Ajax. To spice it up further, AZ’s current coach, Louis van Gaal was Ajax’s former TD. Sweet, eh?<\/p>\n

Whatever it is, I feel it’s better for Ajax to kick Feyenoord’s ass instead. I don’t hate AZ as much as I hate Feyenoord or PSV, yet. Hence, the sweetness of kicking Feyenoord’s ass is greater than the sweetness of kicking AZ’s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ajax Amsterdam (tag) has confirmed a place in the playoff for the second Dutch slot for next season’s Champions’ League. In last league game against RKC Waalwijk Ajax won 4 to 2, hence guaranteeing fourth place. I’m still unclear whether Ajax will face Feyenoord or AZ but either way, Ajax will be facing a rival. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humor","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=771"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}