Julian Brandt's Stunning Volley Ignites Ajax's 5-1 Victory
Julian Brandt lashed in a stunning volley, Ajax hit five, and yet the man who lit the fuse barely raised an arm.
This was a 5-1 win at Fortuna Sittard that felt like a statement, a sharp response to last week’s domestic setback. But for Brandt, the story started with frustration, not celebration.
Brandt’s brilliance, muted reaction
Ajax had already survived a scare when Marc ter Stegen reacted superbly to keep out Ole Romeny. Moments later, on 35 minutes, Brandt found the perfect reply. The German playmaker watched the ball drop and caught it flush, a brilliant volley that ripped past the keeper and put the visitors in charge.
No knee slide. No roar. Just a quiet acknowledgement and a walk back towards halfway.
After the match, speaking to ESPN NL, the 30-year-old laid it out plainly: the goal didn’t erase what he felt had been a poor start.
He admitted he had been annoyed with himself for a string of careless moments on the ball before scoring, describing “sloppy balls and easy passes” that he simply wasn’t willing to gloss over with a wild celebration. It was, he said, more a release of pent-up irritation than a moment for showmanship. He doesn’t see himself as the “typical celebration guy” anyway.
Fortuna bite back, Ajax run away with it
Fortuna Sittard refused to fold. Early in the second half, Anthony Descotte dragged them level and briefly shifted the mood inside the stadium. Ajax, for a few minutes, looked loose again, their own mistakes inviting pressure.
Brandt didn’t hide from that either. He pointed to periods where Ajax surrendered control with unnecessary giveaways, allowing Fortuna to build attacks they didn’t need to face. Those are the passages, he warned, that better sides will punish.
The warning shot seemed to land. The response was ruthless.
Thilo Kehrer restored the lead, Davy Klaassen added another, and Kasper Dolberg joined the party as Ajax pulled away. Youri Baas then rounded off the scoring, turning a briefly tense afternoon into a rout.
The pattern was clear: when Ajax tightened up in possession and sensed danger around their own box, they looked like a team that can open any door in this league. When they switched off, they invited trouble.
Brandt called some of those errors “naive,” the kind you expect from a group with many new and young players. He accepted that it is “normal” at this stage, but underlined that these “small things” have to be ironed out quickly. Concede soft goals in future games, he warned, and everything becomes harder.
Fully fit and “hungry for more”
If the technical details annoyed him, his body no longer does. Brandt confirmed he has finally hit full fitness after missing chunks of pre-season, and he leaned on the data to back it up.
He highlighted strong physical numbers from recent matches, including against PEC Zwolle, pointing to sprint counts and velocity metrics as proof that he is now at 100%. The numbers, he said, show he has his burst back.
“I’m at 100% now,” he stressed, insisting he feels ready for a demanding run of fixtures and “hungry for more.”
On a day when Ajax hit five and answered questions about their resilience, the most telling image might not be the volley itself, but the scorer’s reaction: a playmaker in top physical shape, still demanding more from himself and those around him.
