Ajax 2-2 Excelsior: 33 Shots, a 'Best in Years' Compliment, and the Paradox of a Draw

On the final night of September in Amsterdam, as the clock on the Johan Cruyff ArenA scoreboard rolled to the 94th minute, Ajax had taken 33 shots. Excelsior had two goals. The board read 2-2, and the final whistle blew across a stadium that had gone almost silent.

I was sitting in the press area above the left touchline, close enough to watch Stijn van Gassel every time a ball was lofted into the box. Excelsior's goalkeeper barely had a second to breathe. Each time Ajax shifted the ball to the right and whipped in a cross, the area in front of goal filled with white and red shirts. The third goal never came.

What caught my attention was not the scoreline. It was the mixed zone afterwards, when Alireza Jahanbakhsh — the Iranian midfielder who plays for Excelsior and previously turned out for Feyenoord and AZ — said this was the best Ajax he had faced in years. A visiting player, pinned back for ninety minutes, praising the very team his side had just failed to beat. In my trade, quotes like that usually deserve more analysis than the result.

To understand why a 2-2 draw in round seven matters, it has to be placed correctly on the Eredivisie map.

Ajax is one of Dutch football's three traditional powers, alongside PSV and Feyenoord. The gap between Ajax and Excelsior is not one or two places in the table; it is an entire ecosystem. Excelsior is Rotterdam's third club, living in Feyenoord's shadow, with a wage bill and squad value several times smaller. In the Netherlands, fixtures like this are filed under nothing to lose for the smaller side and no margin for dropped points for the bigger one. That asymmetry is what gives the result its news value.

In the Netherlands, Ajax goes beyond the boundaries of a club. It is a globally recognised brand, an academy studied everywhere, and a symbol of attacking football. Whenever Ajax drops points to a smaller side, the story does not stop at three lost points; it touches an expectation of a standard. Conversely, every point Excelsior takes from games like this carries more moral than table value.

The season's context sharpens the picture. After seven rounds, Excelsior sit seventh on 11 points, roughly 1.57 per game. For a side in the lower half of the table, that is a start above expectations. The match fell immediately before the late-September international break, the window coaches still call a trap: players distracted by call-up schedules, staff juggling rotation, and big clubs paying the price in exactly these rounds.

Jahanbakhsh is no stranger to Eredivisie watchers. The Iranian midfielder has worn Feyenoord and AZ shirts and was long a fixture for the Iran national team. His experience spans many Dutch seasons, many opponents, many different Ajax generations. That gives his words a certain weight: a man who has faced Ajax very often is comparing vertically across time, not merely across one match.

The presence of an Iranian international in the Eredivisie is also a talent-flow signal. The Dutch league has long been a landing spot for established internationals and a stage for those moving from domestic giants to clubs abroad. An Asian player choosing the Netherlands as a career platform is no accident; it is the output of a scouting system and a transfer market with its own logic, where technical value is priced above commercial value in bigger leagues.

I was born in Vietnam and now work in Marseille, following Dutch football from a distance but with a network that runs across several European leagues. The 2026 winter window began with a 7 a.m. training session, when nobody was paying attention. I still keep that habit: arriving early, sitting where few people pass, watching details that the post-match report never records. From the Luzhniki stands, I heard a deal before it was announced — through a stranger's applause. That method taught me that first impressions always need verification, but it also taught me that ignoring first impressions is blinding yourself. What follows on Ajax - Excelsior follows exactly that order: observation first, data second.

Ajax took 33 shots and scored twice. The conversion rate lands around 6%, a figure I derived myself from match data rather than an official statistic published by the organisers, so it should be read as a relative comparison.

The tactical meaning of 33 shots depends entirely on chance quality, which the report does not provide. There is no xG, no xGA, no PPDA. That gap is significant, because the same shot volume can express two opposite situations: Ajax creating a host of clear chances while the opposing keeper produces a masterclass, or Ajax pumping balls into the box mostly through long-range, narrow-angle, blocked efforts. One dataset, two very different stories.

The only anchor for leaning one way is Stijn van Gassel's name. When a goalkeeper is singled out as the man who faced 33 shots, it usually signals a big individual performance. Based on my experience covering matches, reports rarely name the losing side's keeper unless he did something substantial. That is an inference from journalistic convention, not statistical proof, and I am aware of the line.

The core point of this match is this: Ajax's problem was not chance creation, but the conversion of chances into goals. That distinction matters, because the two problems demand entirely different fixes. When a side cannot create, the issue lies in build-up structure, in receiving positions between the lines, in circulation rhythm. When a side creates but does not score, the issue lies in finishing quality, in decisions inside the box, in the psychology in front of goal. Ajax belonged to the second category here, at least according to what the match data shows.

On the other side, Excelsior played exactly to the model head coach Ruben den Uil has built. Jahanbakhsh describes it in three layers: high standards, a fitness base, and collective spirit. He says the coach sets the bar very high and demands a lot from his players; results come from each individual completing his task before it is stitched into the collective. That formula is familiar for over-achieving small clubs: compensating for a talent gap with organisation, task discipline, and conditioning prepared more carefully than the opponent's.

Tactically, Excelsior pressed high. Jahanbakhsh said Ajax struggled with their high press, and added a telling line: perhaps Ajax underestimated them a little. That tactical signal has a clear direction, but it must be read for what it is: a speaker praising his own press. It does not mean he is wrong; it means it is a single source, and that source has an interest in the conclusion.

The interesting part is that both claims can be true at once. Ajax can dominate possession and territory while also struggling against pressing in midfield, if their midfield press-resistance is good but their finishing is poor. A team can pin an opponent back, generate 33 shots, and still be judged as struggling with pressing during transition moments. Football allows such paradoxes to coexist, and the good analyst is the one who does not rush to pick a side.

A word on the mechanics of high pressing, because it is often oversimplified. High pressing is not just running a lot. It is a positioning system: who presses whom, who covers, who holds the line, and above all when the whole block jumps together. A good pressing team does not need to run more than its opponent; it needs to run at the right moment and in the right direction. For a small club, this is the most efficient way to close a technical gap, because it turns the match from a contest of skill into a contest of organisation. In a contest of organisation, the smaller side has far more of a chance.

If van Gassel genuinely had an outstanding game, this result is more exception than system. That is the kind of risk data analysts call an individually driven outcome, and it tends not to repeat the following week. For Excelsior, it means a point at Amsterdam is beautiful for morale but may not say much about true capability.

Timing deserves weight too. The match fell immediately before the late-September international break. That is a familiar noise zone: players may already be thinking about call-ups, staff may be planning to protect key men, and a big club's intensity often dips in exactly these rounds. In professional circles, the phenomenon of players returning from breaks fatigued or injured has its own name, and it is common enough that coaching staffs plan around it. That does not mean it caused the draw; it means it is a variable to enter into the equation before judging Ajax's true quality.

Jahanbakhsh's role inside Excelsior also deserves a look. A player who has worn Feyenoord and AZ shirts and played international football for years, publicly praising his coach, is a signal about the dressing room. At small clubs, the greatest risk is not a lack of talent but a lack of voice. When a respected veteran vouches for the coach's standards, the internal structure is reinforced considerably. That kind of signal does not appear on the scoreboard, but it explains how a mid-table side can hold steady over many rounds.

The report's headline chooses the more comfortable half of the story. Jahanbakhsh praised Ajax's level, but in the same answer he also said Ajax struggled with Excelsior's press and that his side came very close to a win. The headline privileges the half that flatters Ajax, and that changes how readers receive the whole match.

Let me be blunt: the claim that this was the best Ajax in years is a single-source opinion, belonging to the opinion tier rather than the data tier. It is backed by no metric in the report. A home draw against a seventh-placed side is not evidence for that thesis; if anything, it is evidence against it at the level of results.

There is a subtle layer of media craft here. When a player from the smaller side says we just held the best Ajax in years, he is raising the value of his own result. Drawing with a strong Ajax is a bigger achievement than drawing with a mediocre one. The compliment to the opponent, in this case, is simultaneously a revaluation of his own performance. It is a skilful media move, and it is not wrong — it just needs to be seen as a move, not a neutral assessment.

At the tactical level, this paradox leaves an unanswered question. If Ajax really are at their highest level in years, their failure to beat Excelsior at home must be explained by something specific. Two possibilities exist: either the problem is finishing and will self-correct as conversion returns to the mean, or the problem runs deeper into chance quality and will recur. Without xG, nobody can separate the two from a single match.

For Excelsior, the risk runs the other way. Eleven points from seven games is a strong start by the standard of a club their size. But it is a small sample, and in football, above-par starts tend to revert toward underlying value. If Ruben den Uil's fitness and task-discipline model holds all season, they will stay up; if fitness is the only variable, a congested calendar will erode it. What matters is not that they are seventh, but whether they are still there after the international break.

Something about the craft occurred to me while rereading this report. The empty stadiums of 2026 had a sound no journalist was trained to hear: the sound of a pen signing a contract. What goes unrecorded is often as important as what gets written down. In Ajax - Excelsior, the report records 33 shots, a 2-2 score, a compliment. It does not record which chances Ajax missed, at what minute, in what situation. That gap is where the real story sits.

In the VAR era, controversy around matches with this density of balls into the box rarely sits in one specific incident. It sits in the grey zone of the law, where technology solves nothing and merely moves the question from the pitch to the review room. With 33 shots and a deep defensive block, there are enough box contacts to generate a few arguments every match. The absence of a major controversy in the report does not mean there were no incidents; it only means the report chose not to mention them.

There is a rule I set for myself after one mistake. I once filed a story on a single source and had to correct it the next day. Since then, every transfer line I publish needs two independent sources; without them, I switch to aesthetic commentary rather than deal news. For Ajax - Excelsior, the same principle applies: Jahanbakhsh's praise is one source. The match data is the second. The two do not corroborate each other — they conflict. And that conflict is the information.

The next domino sits in the fixture list. The next three to five rounds will show whether Ajax have a finishing problem or a chance-quality problem. If shot volume stays high while goals do not rise, the issue is in the forwards' boots and can be fixed on the training ground. If shot volume falls while results stay poor, the problem runs deeper, into build-up structure.

For Excelsior, the test is the form curve after the break. A team built on fitness tells the truth about itself when the calendar thickens. If they hold a points rate around 1.5 per game, den Uil's model is real. If it drops below 1.2, that is a reversion to the underlying value of a mid-table side.

One open question remains. If Ajax really are the best side in years, why did they let a seventh-placed club leave Amsterdam with a point? The answer may lie in finishing quality. It may also lie in the fact that, in football, a rival's compliment always sounds better than a 90th-minute goal.