Khalid Boulahrouz on AZ's Missed Chances Against Sunderland
Khalid Boulahrouz left the Ziggo Sport studio with the same feeling that hung over AZ’s players in Sunderland: this should never have ended 1-0.
AZ carved out chances in their Europa League opener, plenty of them, but walked away empty-handed after a narrow defeat to Sunderland. For Boulahrouz, the story of the night crystallised in one moment, ten minutes from time.
Mexx Meerdink, clean through, staring at the equaliser, hesitated.
Instead of finishing with conviction, the AZ striker delayed, took an extra touch and then rolled a tame effort against the outstretched leg of goalkeeper Robin Roefs. The chance was gone, and with it AZ’s last real grip on the game.
“At this level, at least one of them has to go in,” Boulahrouz said, visibly irritated as he reviewed the opportunities AZ passed up. That Meerdink miss, in particular, stuck with him. “This chance for Meerdink. It is simply hit too tamely, low to the ground. If you are ruthless, you just smash it into the roof of the net.”
Theo Janssen, sitting alongside him, had already framed the discussion in brutal terms. A striker, he argued, has one obligation above all: become a killer. Boulahrouz agreed, linking that demand directly to Meerdink’s ambitions. “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 distinguish yourself.”
The delay, the extra touch, the lack of decisiveness — for Boulahrouz, it all told the same story.
“Delaying it once more, taking another touch, that means you are no longer quite set yourself,” he said. “As a result, you can no longer strike it the way you want. This is simply wasting a hundred per cent chance. These are things he really has to cut out.”
His criticism didn’t stop at that single moment. Across the 90 minutes, Boulahrouz felt Meerdink never quite imposed himself. “Looking at the whole match, he was simply too sloppy, not good as a focal point... And the chances he got, you have to take them.”
Meerdink did not hide behind excuses. He accepted the blame, both for the miss and for parts of his overall performance. “I think at certain moments I still lost the ball a little too easily, but I also had a number of good moments,” he reflected. “The point for my development is that I have to keep doing it consistently.”
On the decisive chance, his assessment matched the pundits’. “That ball at the end, I have to smash it in. No thinking, just with the instep. In the box I have to be deadly, become deadly.”
You might expect that honesty to soften the verdict in the studio. It did not.
Janssen, if anything, hardened his stance after hearing the interview. “Interesting. He has the feeling he still played quite a decent match. He is quite satisfied,” the former midfielder said. “I would advise him to watch this match back calmly once more, because it comes down to a number of moments in which you have to be deadly as a striker and in which you have to be strong to give your team some calm. Those few moments are not enough, friend.”
Janssen did not question Meerdink’s talent. In fact, he went out of his way to underline it before landing the harshest blow. “He is a very enjoyable footballer, he is technically refined, has all the attributes to be a good player. Only he lacks that hunger. You have to do everything for it. He must always give everything for it, and I sometimes miss that a little with him.”
The potential, in Janssen’s eyes, is obvious. The output is not. “He has so much potential, but he is not getting everything out of it,” he concluded.
For AZ, the loss in Sunderland is just one game in a long European campaign. For Mexx Meerdink, it may become something else entirely: the night he either shrugs off as a missed chance, or the one that forces him to finally become the “killer” everyone says he has to be.
