The Dutch Eredivisie saw another shortened weekend after Feyenoord and AZ opted for a week off between their European games against Inter and Tottenham Hotspur.
A shorter weekend does not mean a shortage of action, however.
NAC Breda and Sparta Rotterdam opened a sunny weekend of Eredivisie football with a 1-1 draw in Breda after former Schalke 04 defender Leo Greiml grabbed his second red card of the season after a reckless foul on Sparta winger Mitchell van Bergen.
Greiml has built quite the reputation after being given eight yellow and two red cards in 23 games for NAC. His performance against Sparta might've caught the spirit of his season perfectly - Greiml committed five fouls, half of NAC's total throughout the match.
Loanee Carel Eiting opened the scoring for a resurrected Sparta after twelve minutes before Slovakian youngster Leo Sauer put NAC back alongside in the 63rd minute. The draw helped Sparta crawl to the fifteenth spot, marking the first time since November that Sparta are outside the danger zone.
The weekend continued with Fortuna Sittard deservedly beating Heracles Almelo at home, with the only goal coming from a Kristoffer Peterson spot-kick.
Fortuna left the guests without a single shot on target after 90 minutes and jumped to eighth place with this win, retaking this spot after Heerenveen lost Saturday evening away at PSV.
The game between PSV and Heerenveen was presented as tense after PSV had not won a league game since mid-January and had just suffered the biggest loss for a Dutch side in European history, with a 7-1 loss to Arsenal.
On the other hand, Heerenveen felt rejuvenated after the departure of Robin van Persie and the 3-1 victory over AZ which followed – the same opponent Heerenveen lost 9-1 to earlier in the season.
PSV opened the game with the upper hand but couldn't convert their dominance into goals. However, standout midfielder Ismael Saibari relieved the home fans with the opening goal in the 40th minute, rewarding PSV for keeping the game firmly in their grasp. The home side ended the first half with a ball possession percentage of 76% and 12 goal attempts.
Guus Til would double PSV's lead a little over 10 minutes after the break before Noa Lang threatened to close the game minutes after Til's goal.
Instead, Heerenveen would reply with 18 minutes to go when Levi Smans profited from a poor defensive effort from Olivier Boscagli and calmly slotted the ball behind Walter Benitez. Smans' goal meant PSV failed to keep a clean sheet for the eighth league game in a row, making this their worst such in-season streak since 2015 and the tied-worst since 2013 (10 games).
A nervous final 20 minutes ensued in Eindhoven, but the home crowd got treated to a first league win since PSV's 3-2 win over NAC Breda on January 15th.
Manager Peter Bosz acknowledged it wasn't a great outing from the start from PSV. "We were a little nervous at the start," said Bosz during the post-match press conference. "A couple of guys were out of breath early; that wasn't due to fitness but more down to nerves."
Bosz also noted the loss to Arsenal made a serious impact. "It makes sense that there was frustration, anger and disappointment. And you noticed that confidence was fragile," Bosz continued. "This match gives confidence, but no guarantees. But the way we played football today was very good. It reminded me of the year and a half when we were so dominant.
"I said in the meeting yesterday that they had to show balls and start playing football. Because that is what we are good at."
The Eredivisie's Sunday football slate got kicked off by Willem II and FC Utrecht battling out an entertaining match in Tilburg.
Willem II opened the scoring after Turkish full-back Mickael Tirpan fired a smart free-kick into FC Utrecht's box and Boris Lambert fired the home side in front with a thunderous effort.
The guests would pull alongside thanks to Sebastien Haller's first Eredivisie goal since May 11th 2022 - the Ivorian striker headed the ball in after Sofian El Karouani threw in a dangerous cross for his seventh assist of the season. Eight minutes later, Dutch youth international Noah Ohio put Utrecht in front with a worldie from 25 metres out, truly thumping the ball in the top right corner.
Icelandic defender Runar Sigurgeirsson got Willem II back alongside Utrecht just eight minutes later before English youth international Adrian Blake repeated his trick from Utrecht's home game against Go Ahead Eagles earlier this season and earned Utrecht a win after a dramatic final 20 minutes with a low-driven effort from distance.
The win meant FC Utrecht would be able to keep their third spot for at least another week and meant Ron Jans' side grabbed two consecutive league wins for the first time since November.
League leaders Ajax would take the stage next and visit PEC Zwolle, a former nemesis who famously beat the Amsterdam side 5-1 in the 2014 KNVB Cup final.
Those days are long gone, and PEC had won just two of the twenty meetings with Ajax since the biggest win in club history.
Meanwhile, Ajax were looking to bounce back from a 2-1 Europa League defeat to Eintracht Frankfurt just three days prior and had to do without goalkeeper Remko Pasveer yet again after the 41-year-old injured his groin against the German side.
The injury bug would come to haunt Ajax yet again when striker Brian Brobbey suffered a knee injury less than fifteen minutes into the game in Zwolle. With Wout Weghorst also out with a toe injury, manager Francesco Farioli had to turn to former Chelsea and Burnley man Bertrand Traore to once again act as their striker.
'Lucky Ajax'
A lacklustre first half saw Ajax barely put a dent in a pack of butter, as the Dutch saying goes, but seemed to move the team forward after the break. Barely fifteen minutes after the break, Ajax forced a penalty when Kenneth Taylor's shot hit Anselmo Garcia MacNulty's hand.
The penalty caused some uproar among Dutch football fans, criticising referee Bas Nijhuis and VAR official Alex Bos for making a 'biased' decision and pulling comparisons to an incident earlier this season when Ajax midfielder Davy Klaassen handled the ball in very similar fashion during the away game at Go Ahead Eagles but didn't get penalised.
Nijhuis would react to the penalty incident a day later on Dutch television. "I was not happy with the penalty. The rule is: if a player shoots the ball at goal, you make yourself wide, and the ball hits your arm, even if you can't do anything about it, it's a penalty," said Nijhuis.
"I felt bad for the guy (Mac Nulty). After all, there was little he could do about it."
The experienced referee also reflected on another incident from earlier in the game when New Zealand international Ryan Thomas risked getting a second yellow card for touching Nijhuis. Nijhuis would swat Thomas' arm away in irritated fashion but decided to spare the midfielder, later confirming he had to give Thomas a second yellow in accordance with the rules.
After Nijhuis confirmed the VAR decision and gave Ajax the penalty, Taylor converted on his second spot-kick of the season and scored Ajax's first after two failed attempts in the Eredivisie in February.
Ajax played out the match in a mature fashion, not creating many more chances but also hardly giving away any chances throughout the game. The penalty once again gave Ajax the title 'Lucky Ajax' since the Amsterdam side barely impressed against PEC from an offensive point of view.
However, Ajax winning another game with a more defensive style of play is exactly the formula Farioli intended to implement in Amsterdam. The 36-time Eredivisie champions are riding a 10-game win streak and kept a clean sheet in eight of those games. Their clean sheet in Zwolle meant Ajax have now held their opponents from scoring in five consecutive league games - as many as all of last season and their first 5-game clean sheet streak since late 2021.
Their 18 conceded goals is the second-lowest amount through 25 games in the last nine seasons and one only bettered by the 9 goals Ajax conceded through 25 games since the 2021/22 season.
The league leaders enter a crucial week with their Europa League away game at Eintracht Frankfurt and a home game against AZ, the team Ajax have already lost twice to this season.
Last weekend's Eredivisie action continued in Nijmegen with a game between NEC and Go Ahead Eagles.
The high-flying Eagles opened the score after 41 minutes when Dean James - who's due to make his international debut for Indonesia - opened the scoring.
Lasse Schone - the record holder of Eredivisie games played as a foreign-born player - let his team down just minutes after the break when the Dane grabbed the second red card of his career. Schone first got penalised for obstructing Mats Deijl and received a swift second yellow for a cannonade in the direction of referee Sander van der Eijk.
It only took Go Ahead Eagles sixteen minutes to profit from the situation after Milan Smit headed home the 2-0. French full-back Brayann Pereira put NEC back in it after Dean James deflected a long-distance effort into his own net, but the home crowd's hope would not last long as Oliver Antman decided the game just five minutes later in favour of the visitors.
Kento Shiogai's goal in injury time capped off a turbulent week for NEC, during which manager Rogier Meijer announced his departure at the end of the season.
The Nijmegen side are balancing on the edge of the relegation zone and are now just two points clear from the relegation play-off spot. NEC are now winless in six games, and although Meijer has built a good reputation in Nijmegen after clinching promotion to the Eredivisie and a cup final in the 2023/24 KNVB Cup, the 43-year-old has to fear for his job right before his planned departure.
Little under 90 minutes driving away, FC Twente and Almere City got the honour of closing out the Eredivisie weekend.
The home side was riding a 5-game unbeaten streak and had to face an Almere City side, which came off the back of a tough two-game stretch with losses to Feyenoord and Ajax.
Twente knew only a win would keep them close to third-placed FC Utrecht in the fight for the last Champions League ticket. The Eredivisie's top goalscorer heard of the task at hand and took it personally - Sem Steijn produced the only goal of the game when he tapped in a cross-goal cross from Bart van Rooij.
Steijn wrote Eredivisie history with his goal, becoming the first midfielder since the illustrious Jari Litmanen to score 20 goals in a single Eredivisie campaign. The 23-year-old has been extremely efficient with his offensive output, converting 27.4% of his 73 shots - only AZ's Troy Parrott (20.3% from 59 shots) comes within 10% of Steijn's conversion among players with at least 50 shots in the Eredivisie.
Nevertheless, Steijn's performances so far have not earned him a spot in the Dutch squad, as manager Ronald Koeman has once again delayed the decision to call him up.
Winners of the Week
PSV fans have had to wait nearly two months for a league win. Their 4-game winless streak may not look overly dramatic, but the only other time in the last twelve years PSV waited this long for a win was in late 2019.
The reigning champions' 2-1 win over Heerenveen did not even reflect PSV's level during the game, according to Peter Bosz.. Though the boss did admit, the closing stages were tense after Smans got Heerenveen back in it: "I thought: it won't go wrong after all, will it? Fortunately, we won the game."
A decent chunk of PSV fans and several Dutch media demanded or expected Peter Bosz to get fired before the game, but the experienced manager remained unfazed amid the chaos. "The players benefit most from a coach who stays calm and looks at what the players need," said Bosz. "About the chemistry between the players and me, I have not worried.
"If that chemistry is no longer there, I will step down. But it is. I work with those boys every day. We eat and train together and spend a lot of time together. I know there is no problem in that respect."
During the joyous win, more good news hit Eindhoven last weekend when full-back Sergino Dest made his long-awaited return. The former Ajax and Barcelona defender returned to action after rupturing his ACL in April 2024.
PSV will now look to save some face during the return of their Champions League round of 16 tie against Arsenal after last week's 7-1 defeat before travelling to nearby RKC Waalwijk in a weekend where the Eindhoven side will hope to reduce the gap to Ajax to five points.
Losers of the Week
Promoted Willem II impressed throughout the first half of the season, flying as high as up in sixth and even fighting for a spot in the play-offs for European football as recently as two months ago.
However, the Tilburg side has tumbled down the table ever since and is now in the middle of a fight against relegation, occupying a spot in the relegation zone for the first time this season after Sunday's loss to FC Utrecht.
The visitors weren't able to make it hard on the hosts for the majority of the game but found renewed hope after Haller put Utrecht alongside. Willem II, meanwhile, lost control over the game and could only see how Utrecht expanded kept getting in front.
Part of the problem is the regression of Thomas Didillon-Hodl, Willem II's standout French goalkeeper. Didillon-Hodl has dramatically gone backwards in several key goalkeeping metrics: whereas the Frenchman saved 91.7% of all shots from outside the box in the first half of the season, he has only saved 63.2% of those shots since the start of January - the lowest percentage of all goalkeepers who played at least 50% of all minutes since January 1st.
His 75% save percentage ranked first among all goalkeepers in the first half of the season, but this number dropped to 62.1% which ranks him 16th since January 1st. His 37 saves still rank him first since January 1st, also showing a more general regression in Willem II's defensive efforts.
Goal of the Week
Battling for a win, FC Utrecht pushed forward after Sebastien Haller broke the visitor's deadlock. Noah Ohio, a former Manchester City youth academy player and English U16 international, stepped up in the flashiest way possible - taking no prisoners as he launched a rocket into Thomas Didillon-Hodl's top right corner.
Team of the Week
Without too many top performances, Go Ahead Eagles' Oliver Antman takes the top spot in this week's player ratings. The Finnish midfielder notched one goal and two assists against NEC, contributing to all three of his side's goals in the 3-2 victory.
Antman is accompanied by teammates Dean James and Enric Llansana after the former scored the opener and the latter led all players in tackles (5), interceptions (4), touches (98), and duels won (11).
Even though his side lost to Antman, James, and Llansana, goalkeeper Robin Roefs prevented the visitors from annihilating NEC in front of the home crowd with his league-leading 11 saves.
FC Twente's Bart van Rooij and Gustaf Lagerbielke fill in half of the defensive line after their performances against Almere City. Van Rooij provided the assist for the game's lone goal, whereas Lagerbielke led the team in touches (75), passes (56), duels won (8), aerial duels won (7), and possession won (7).
Nick Viergever completes the defence after grabbing 3 of FC Utrecht's 5 interceptions without committing any fouls. PSV's Ismael Saibari opened the scoring against Heerenveen and created 4 chances, and is accompanied by NAC's Leo Sauer on the left side of the midfield after his goal against Sparta and team-leading 5 shots, producing half of his team's shots against Sparta.
The striker partnership only has one goal between them with Fortuna's Kristoffer Peterson and Sparta's Tobias Lauritsen. Lauristen provided the assist for Carel Eiting's 1-0 and created 3 chances during Friday night's game, whereas Peterson solidified his position as Fortuna's top goalscorer by scoring a penalty in Fortuna Sittard's 1-0 win over Heracles Almelo.