The title battle continues after this weekend between four clubs. Leader Feyenoord and first pursuers Ajax and AZ all won as well. PSV is 6 points behind Feyenoord. FC Twente saw the backlog of the team from Rotterdam increase to 12 points, and thus seems to lose the title definitively.
Fábio Silva was allowed to participate in PSV from the start for the first time since he came over from Wolverhampton Wanderers on a rental basis last month. Trainer Ruud van Nistelrooij let the 20-year-old Portuguese start as left winger. Xavi Simons again moved back a line, to the position of most attacking midfielder.
Ibrahim Sangaré also returned to the team after two games of absence due to illness. Guus Til and Erick Gutiérrez had to settle for a reserve role.
Silva was accurate three days earlier as a substitute against Sevilla in the final phase. Now it didn’t take long for the attacker to hit the target again. After a good cross from Johan Bakayoko, the other PSV winger, Silva headed in from close range in the 9th minute: 1-0.
FC Twente became dangerous for the first time after fifteen minutes. After a good deep pass from Gijs Smal, Virgil Misidjan escaped from Philipp Mwene’s back. Goalkeeper Walter Benitez saved. In a fairly tame first half, not much else happened.
Immediately after the break, Xavi Simons missed a great opportunity to make it 2-0. The Orange international waited too long to shoot in a detached position. That was an expensive miss, because Twente did strike in the 47th minute via Misidjan. A spinning ball from the side was not hit by anyone and disappeared into the goal in one go.
PSV lost control for a moment and escaped from falling behind with a shot from Vaclav Cerny and a header from Michel Vlap. Luuk de Jong scored for PSV in the 56th minute, after another good cross from Bakayoko, to head ahead at the far post: 2-1. For De Jong, it was his hundredth goal for PSV in the Eredivisie.
Simons made up for his mistake at the beginning of the second half by shooting PSV 3-1 in the 74th minute. The PSV player is now joint top scorer in the Eredivisie.
Earlier in the day, leader Feyenoord won 2-4 at number 12 in the ranking Fortuna Sittard. Feyenoord took the lead through an own goal from Ximo Navarro, who headed the ball into his own goal. The second goal of the afternoon was considerably more beautiful. Javairô Dilrosun put the ball back outside the sixteen-meter area on Mats Wieffer: the revelation of the season shot the ball hard from more than 20 meters. It was Wieffer’s first goal for Feyenoord in the Eredivisie.
Just before half time it also became 0-3. Alireza Jahanbakhsh enabled Santiago Giménez to tap the ball into the empty goal.
No tension in the game
Fortuna reduced the deficit to two in the 47th minute through a shot from Deroy Duarte, but not much later Igor Paixão made it 1-4. In the final phase, the Greek defender Dimitris Siovas headed in from a corner, but it was no longer exciting.
Later in the afternoon, Ajax brought the gap with Feyenoord back to three points, with a 1-2 win at Vitesse. Marco van Ginkel gave the team from Arnhem the lead, but the team from Amsterdam struggled to win. Davy Klaassen put the teams on an equal footing before the break. Edson Álvarez headed in the winning goal in the second half. The assist came from captain Dusan Tadic, who played game number 150 for the reigning champions. He was involved in 151 hits (73 goals and 78 assists).
AZ booked a difficult victory yesterday against the number last in the Eredivisie, Cambuur. Vangelis Pavlidis opened the score for AZ just before half-time. Wouter Goes made it 2-0 about fifteen minutes before the end, with his first goal for the club in the Eredivisie. Bjørn Johnsen then made it 2-1 from a penalty kick.
