Ajax player drops bombshell about defeat to Benfica | OneFootball

Ko Itakura recently revealed that he did not train in the position he was used in during Ajax vs. Benfica. The club from Luz traveled to the Netherlands last Tuesday to face the Dutch side in the fifth round of the Champions League, in a match that ended with a 2-0 victory for the Eagles.

At the end of the match, Ko Itakura spoke with Toru Nakata from the Japanese football magazine World Soccer Digest, and made some revelations about the days leading up to the Ajax vs. Benfica game, which further worsened the difficult moment the historic Dutch club is going through.

"I am not happy with my current situation," Ko Itakura reportedly told Peter Grim, Ajax’s coach, the day before the match against Benfica. The coach’s response surprised the Japanese center-back: "Ko, I want you to play as a defensive midfielder tomorrow."

The center-back by trade continued: "I was surprised, because we hadn’t trained for that (...) The players who played against Excelsior needed to recover, so there wasn’t much training for the match against Benfica. That’s why I thought: ‘Huh?’"

"There are things I could have done better, but I was able to find peace by focusing on what I could control at that moment," concluded the Japanese player, about the match that Ajax ended up losing to Benfica in the Champions League.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇵🇹 here.