Alfred Schreuder lamented the failure of his Ajax team to capitalise on their early dominance against Liverpool – and admitted the Reds ultimately exposed the gulf in class with his side.
Goals from Mohamed Salah, Darwin Nunez and Harvey Elliott earned Jurgen Klopp's men a 3-0 win in their Champions League clash at the Johan Cruiyff ArenA on Wednesday night.
The result secured qualification to the last 16 for Liverpool, with Ajax now likely to drop into the Europa League in the New Year.
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Ajax were on top in the opening exchanges with Steven Berghuis missing their best chance when striking the base of the post with only Alisson Becker to beat.
And Ajax boss Schreuder said: “The first 35-40 minutes we saw a really all right Ajax, we showed a completely different face than in Liverpool in the first game. We had to score one of our chances, we had three obvious chances to go ahead but after their 1-0 they had even bigger chance to make it 2-0.
“Then after half-time the corner goal (from Nunez) was too quick and then you immediately see it will be a very, very hard game against an experienced team who showed how good they are. The positive thing is the squad stayed together but the difference in level was simply too big in the second half.”
Schreuder added: “If you look at the second half and how professionally they played it out, that’s what I mean. Liverpool played it really well. It was a very hard game against a very hard opponent.
“We were playing at an equal level for 35-40 minutes. As long as you do some things better than Liverpool then you can play against a team like them.
“The first half was a lot better than at Anfield, which was a big step forward. But the result wasn’t good enough.”
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