Almere City FC lost 0-2 to Feyenoord on Sunday. Despite the fact that it went well with the reigning national champions, twenty minutes before the end the formation was too powerful. After it seemed for a long time that the equalizer would come in injury time, Feyenoord took the distinctive lead in the final minutes.
Feyenoord head coach Arne Slot is sick of it. He stays home for the day. Barely recovered from the trip to Rome for the Europa League, the coach is ‘under the weather’. That trip to the capital of Italy exhausted the team anyway. 90 minutes long. Extension. Penalties. Not enough time to get the supporter buses to Almere on time.
Those Feyenoord supporters; they therefore miss the 0-1. However, they arrive just in time to see how referee Erwin de Graaf cancels the goal with the help of the VAR. An offside incident in midfield ensures that Nordin Bakker can still dream of his tenth clean sheet.
On the other side of the field, towards Section D, Almere City FC shows itself to be a skilled attacker. It puts pressure on Feyenoord and it is Yoann Cathline and Álvaro Peña who twice put pressure on the record series of clean sheets of the reigning national champions with dangerous goal attempts.
As they say: ‘One reaches Rome one foot at a time’. It means something like ‘those who persevere will achieve their goal’. Nowhere is this more applicable than to Almere City FC, which spared no effort in the second half to put Feyenoord on hold. It throws itself before the lions and occasionally plunges its sword into the people of Rotterdam. Such as with a sharp shot by substitute Jason van Duiven.
Yet that extra bonus point by bringing Feyenoord to its knees will not be achieved. Twenty minutes before the end it is a shot, out of nowhere, that gives the Rotterdam team the lead. Despite insistence in injury time, when it seemed for a while that Almere City FC had the equalizer in hand, the score ended up being 0-2.
The necessary points for enforcement must now come in the month of March. It is collecting per day, per week, per month. But in Almere everyone is Ally Positive. After all, Rome wasn’t built in one day. This one point against national champion Feyenoord would have been nice, but it was not counted on at the front.
Almere City FC will continue its quest for enforcement next Sunday with an away match on Sunday evening against Heracles Almelo. Tickets for this match can be purchased via tickets.almerecity.nl
Photo’s Ron Baltus / sportsshots.pro