AZ's Missed Chances Cost Them in Europa League Opener
AZ left the Stadium of Light with nothing but regret. A 1-0 defeat to Sunderland in their Europa League opener, and the feeling they had thrown away a night that should have belonged to them.
They carved out chances. Plenty of them. They just didn’t score.
And in the closing stages, with ten minutes left on the clock, the moment arrived for Mexx Meerdink. The striker found himself with the kind of opportunity that decides European nights. Time, space, the ball at his feet. He hesitated. One touch too many, one thought too long. His shot stayed low and tame, and Robin Roefs stretched out a leg to block.
“At this level, at least one of them has to go in,” he said, looking back over AZ’s missed chances. The Meerdink moment in particular stuck with him. “This chance from Meerdink. It is just hit too weakly, low to the ground. If you are ruthless, you just smash it into the roof of the net.”
Theo Janssen had already used the word every striker dreads hearing they lack: killer. Boulahrouz agreed. “Theo rightly said: you have to become a killer as a striker. Especially if he wants to get to the Netherlands national team. Then these are the chances in which you can set yourself apart.”
For Boulahrouz, the problem wasn’t just the finish. It was the whole sequence.
“Delaying it once more, taking another touch, that means you are not quite in the right position yourself,” he argued. “Because of that, you can no longer strike it the way you want. This is simply wasting a 100 per cent chance.”
His assessment of Meerdink’s overall performance was just as unforgiving. “These are things he really has to cut out. Looking at the whole match, he was simply too sloppy, not good as a focal point... And the chances he got, you have to finish them.”
Meerdink didn’t hide behind excuses. He knew where the finger would be pointed and, to his credit, pointed it at himself.
“I think at some moments I lost the ball a bit too easily, but I also had a number of good moments,” he reflected. “My area for development is that I have to keep doing it consistently.”
Then he went straight to the miss that defined his night. “That ball at the end, I have to smash it in. Not think and just hit it with the instep. In the box I have to be, become, deadly.”
You might expect that level of self-critique to soften the pundits. It didn’t.
Janssen listened to the interview and went in even harder.
“Interesting. He has the feeling that he still played quite a decent match. He is quite satisfied,” Janssen said. “I would advise him to calmly watch this match back again, because it comes down to a number of moments in which, as a striker, you have to be deadly and in which you have to be strong to give your team some calm. Those few moments are not enough, my friend.”
The former midfielder sees a player with the tools, but not yet the edge.
“He is a very enjoyable footballer, he is technically refined, has all the attributes to be a good player,” Janssen concluded. “Only he lacks that hunger. You have to do everything for it. He must always give everything for it, and I miss that a little with him sometimes. He has so much potential, but he is not getting everything out of it.”
AZ’s night in Sunderland will be remembered for one goal scored by the hosts and a handful of chances squandered by the visitors. For Meerdink, it might be remembered as something else: the night he found out that talent and technique are no longer enough, and that the Europa League does not wait for strikers still learning how to be ruthless.
