Getafe coach responds after Barcelona midfielder Frenkie de Jong describes his team “annoying”
Getafe boss Jose Bordalas has said he doesn’t want his side to play like Barcelona after Frenkie de Jong criticised his side’s style.
The Azulones knocked De Jong’s former side Ajax out of the Europa League at the last-32 stage recently, a defeat which clearly still bothered the midfielder, despite his transfer last summer.
Getafe’s season so far: Five things to know…
- Getafe are in the Europa League this season after narrowly missing out on the Champions League last campaign.
- They’ve continued to impress this season and currently sit fourth in La Liga.
- They qualified for the knockout stages of the Europa League and were drawn against Ajax.
- Jaime Mata’s goal in Amsterdam was enough to see them through on aggregate.
- El Geta will be hoping to get into Europe’s top competition next season.
Ajax were strong favourites to progress past Getafe given their exploits in Europe last season, where they reached the semi-finals of the Champions League before being knocked out by ‘that’ Lucas Moura hat-trick.
They failed to progress through a difficult group which contained Lille, Valencia and Chelsea and ended up in the second-string tournament — probably expecting to get to the latter stages.
Instead, the Spanish underdogs did what they’ve done so many times over the past year and surprised everyone, beating Erik ten Hag’s side at home before narrowly losing 2-1 away, which saw them through.
De Jong told NOS Sport after the game: “The match between Getafe and Ajax was painful for me, especially frustrating.
“Getafe doesn’t play to entertain the public, I find it annoying to watch their games.”
But Bordalas has hit back, implying that De Jong’s Barca aren’t exactly thrilling to watch either.
He told Radio Marca: “When we played against Barca, his goalkeeper gave 69 passes.
“I don’t want my goalkeeper to give 69 passes, something we would not be doing well.
“I want to create goalscoring chances.”
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Ajax struggle after losing stars
There was a horrible feeling after Ajax’s heartbreaking defeat at home to Spurs last season. A feeling that this chance wouldn’t come around again any time soon.
De Jong was on his way to Barcelona and captain Matthijs de Ligt was certain to move away — he eventually did, to Juventus. They kept hold of Dusan Tadic but now Hakim Ziyech has had his move to Chelsea confirmed as well.
They may still sit top of the Eredivise, but they are not the team they were 12 months ago. Their defeat to Getafe was nothing short of a disaster, and Ten Hag must ensure that his side win the domestic trophies available to them otherwise this season will be deemed a failure.
