Ajax player makes shocking admission about Benfica defeat: Huh? | 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 match between Ajax and Benfica, which further worsened the tough moment the historic Dutch side 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. So I thought: 'Huh?'"

"There are things I could have done better, but I managed to find peace by focusing on what I could control at that moment," the Japanese player concluded, 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.