AZ Alkmaar Must Show More After Sunderland Defeat as Hapoel Be'er Sheva Come to Town

Thursday 15 October. AZ Alkmaar at home. UEFA Europa League. This should be a winnable night for the Dutch side. The thing is, they have not shown me enough yet to assume anything.

AZ Alkmaar: A Blank and a Defeat That Still Stings

AZ lost 0-1 to Sunderland in their only completed Europa League match. Sunderland. At home, in European competition. You cannot dress that up. They were shut out completely, scored nothing, and went down to a single goal. That is not a performance. That is an absence of one.

Listen, I am not saying AZ are a bad side. I am saying they failed to compete on the night that mattered. The basics were not there. You have to score to win football matches. You have to create danger. They did neither against Sunderland, and now they face a Thursday evening with their backs against it already.

The home crowd will want a reaction. The players owe them one. Whether they deliver it is the only question worth asking right now.

Hapoel Be'er Sheva: Solid or Simply Cautious?

Hapoel Be'er Sheva drew 0-0 with Dinamo Zagreb in their only Europa League match. To be fair, Dinamo Zagreb is a decent side in this competition. A clean sheet there is not nothing. But let us not romanticise a goalless draw either. They did not score. They did not win. They got a point.

The thing is, that 0-0 tells you something about how Hapoel intend to set up. They were disciplined against Zagreb. They stayed organised. They did not gift chances away. That is accountability in defence. But you also need desire going forward, and I have no evidence yet that they have it at this level.

They will come to Alkmaar and try to make it tight. That is the plan. It is readable. AZ should be able to handle it if they show up with the right attitude.

The Absences That Matter

The injury data relates to one of these squads, and it is not a clean bill of health. There is one player suspended until January 2026, which tells you that suspension has been running for a long time. There are two players out with moderate injuries, no return dates attached to either. There is a fourth player out with a major injury. Four players unavailable in one squad is significant. It limits depth. It limits options. It puts pressure on whoever is left standing.

I do not need to overanalyse it. Missing players means someone else has to step in and do a job. They either have the standards to do that or they do not. We will find out Thursday.

Head to Head: Nothing to Go On

There is no head-to-head history between these two clubs in the data. None. So we are going in blind on that front. You judge it on what you can see. AZ lost their opener. Hapoel drew theirs. Both need points. That is the entire context. End of.

What Needs to Happen for AZ

AZ have to win this. At home, against a side who drew 0-0 in their first match, this is the kind of fixture you must take three points from. The attitude has to be right from the first whistle. No slow starts. No waiting to see what the opposition do. Get after them. Compete for every second ball. Create chances and finish them.

The thing is, European football rewards teams who control their home games and suffocate the opposition early. AZ have the platform to do that here. Whether they have the desire to execute it is another matter. Last time out, they were too passive. Too quiet. That cannot happen again.

What Hapoel Will Try to Do

Hapoel will set up to frustrate. They will sit deep, be hard to break down, and look to nick something on the counter. That is a legitimate approach. It worked well enough against Zagreb. The question is whether AZ have the quality and the patience to break them down over ninety minutes.

If AZ are patient, if they keep their shape, and if they do not panic when the first few attacks come to nothing, the goal should come. Hapoel kept a clean sheet against Zagreb but they also scored nothing. They are not a team that will blow you away. AZ just need to be better than they were against Sunderland, which is not a high bar.

The Verdict

AZ Alkmaar to win. At home. Against opposition who have not scored in this competition. That is the logical conclusion. The caveat is that AZ gave me nothing to be excited about in matchday one. They were toothless and they lost. If they repeat that performance on Thursday, Hapoel will take a point and nobody will be surprised.

But I back AZ to show the right attitude here. Home support. Something to prove. A winnable opponent in front of them. The basics should take care of the result. They better had. End of.