AZ's Defeat to Sunderland: Meerdink's Missed Opportunities

AZ left Wearside with nothing. That, for Khalid Boulahrouz, was the real crime.

A 1-0 defeat to Sunderland in their Europa League opener told only part of the story. AZ carved out chances, enough to take at least a point, maybe more. They just didn’t take them.

And in the eye of that storm stood Mexx Meerdink.

A miss that defined the night

Ten minutes from time, the moment came. AZ chasing an equaliser, Sunderland wobbling, and Meerdink staring at a huge chance to drag his side level. Time, space, the goal in front of him.

He waited. A touch too many, a split-second of doubt. The shot finally came, low and tame, and Robin Roefs threw out a leg to block. Chance gone. Game drifting away.

In the Ziggo Sport studio, Boulahrouz could barely hide his irritation.

"At this level, at least one of them has to go in," he snapped, speaking about the flurry of AZ opportunities. On Meerdink’s late miss, he was even sharper. "It is just hit too weakly, low to the ground. If you are ruthless, you just smash it into the roof of the net."

Theo Janssen had already said it, and Boulahrouz agreed: a striker has to become a killer. Especially one with ambitions of the Netherlands national team. These are the moments that define careers.

Delay the shot, take another touch, and the angle shifts, the defender closes, the keeper sets. Boulahrouz saw that hesitation as fatal. "Delaying it once more, taking another touch, that means you are not quite in the right position yourself. Because of that, you can no longer strike it the way you want. This is simply wasting a 100 per cent chance."

His verdict on the overall performance was just as unforgiving. Meerdink, he felt, was "too sloppy", not sharp enough as a focal point, and when the chances did fall, he didn’t finish them. For a No. 9 at this level, that is the job description.

Meerdink owns it – but not enough for Janssen

To his credit, Meerdink didn’t hide. He knew what everyone had seen.

"I think at some moments I lost the ball a bit too easily, but I also had a number of good moments," he said afterwards. The word he kept returning to was consistency. Do the good things, but do them all the time.

And that miss? No excuses. "That ball at the end, I have to smash it in. Not think and just hit it with the instep. In the box I have to be, become, deadly."

You might expect that honesty to soften the pundits. It didn’t.

Janssen listened to the interview and bristled. "Interesting," he began, before cutting straight through the optimism. Meerdink, he felt, still believed he had played "quite a decent match" and sounded "quite satisfied."

Janssen’s advice was simple and cold: go home, watch the game back, and look at the key moments. Not the nice touches. The decisive ones. "It comes down to a number of moments in which, as a striker, you have to be deadly and in which you have to be strong to give your team some calm. Those few moments are not enough, my friend."

Talent, but where is the hunger?

Janssen didn’t dismiss Meerdink as a player. Far from it. He called him "a very enjoyable footballer", technically refined, with all the attributes to become a good player.

That, for him, was the problem.

Potential is not the issue. Hunger is. "Only he lacks that hunger. You have to do everything for it. He must always give everything for it, and I miss that a little with him sometimes," Janssen said.

The frustration in the studio came from that gap between what Meerdink could be and what he currently is. "He has so much potential, but he is not getting everything out of it."

AZ’s night in Sunderland will be remembered for a narrow defeat and a stack of missed chances. For Meerdink, it may be remembered as something else: the evening when the demands of top-level football were spelled out, bluntly and publicly.

The question now is simple. Does he turn that criticism into the edge his game is missing, or will nights like this keep defining him?