Ajax 5-3 Sion: Tolu Arokodare Brace and Boteli Treble Headline Eight-Goal Europa Conference League Thriller

Ajax 5-3 Sion. Eight goals. Twenty-six shots from the home side. A goalkeeper who made nine saves and still ended up on the losing team. If you wanted proof that clean sheets are not an accident, this was it. This was not a football match. It was a warning about what happens when two sets of defenders forget the basics exist.

The First Half: Chaos from the Whistle

Sion had the audacity to score inside the first minute. Youri Baas put his left foot through it, and just like that, Ajax were behind before they had drawn breath. You would expect that to settle Sion. It did not settle Sion. It settled nobody. This game was never going to be tidy and it made that very clear very quickly.

Winsley Boteli equalised for Ajax in the 18th minute with a right-foot finish. Then he did it again in the 36th minute. The Swiss side were being torn apart through the middle and they had no answers. Boteli was clinical. You cannot take that away from him.

Sion then lost a player to injury at the 22nd minute mark, with Jorthy Mokio replacing Youri Regeer. Losing a player that early disrupts your shape. But shape only matters if you had one to begin with, and Sion's defensive organisation was nowhere to be found.

Davy Klaassen made it 3-1 in the 39th minute. Ajax were rampant. Then Tolu Arokodare added a fourth right on the stroke of half time, with Abdellah Ouazane providing the assist. Ajax went in at the break leading 4-1. The thing is, it looked like it could have been more. Ajax had already created ten big chances by full time, missing five of them. On another night, this scoreline is embarrassing for Sion in a very different way.

The Second Half: Arokodare Again, Then the Floodgates

Ajax came out after the break and killed the game inside six minutes. Arokodare scored again in the 51st minute, his second of the night, assisted once more by Ouazane. Caio Henrique then set up Oliver Edvardsen, who had come on as a substitute at half time replacing Steven Berghuis, to make it 5-1 in the 54th minute. Game over. Or so you would think.

Sion managed to make it interesting in the worst possible way for themselves. They got two yellow cards, with Noé Sow booked in the 50th minute for a foul and Numa Lavanchy carded in the 59th minute for handball. Two yellows, trailing by four goals, and still managing to give away penalties and set pieces. That is a certain kind of discipline problem. Accountability was not a word anybody was taking seriously in the Sion dressing room.

Boteli pulled one back in the 90th minute to complete his hat-trick, with Fodé Sylla assisting. He had come off the bench himself, entering in the 56th minute. His three goals were the only bright spots for Sion in what was otherwise a thoroughly miserable evening. Credit where it is due. The lad competed. His team did not.

The Numbers Tell the Real Story

You do not need to look hard at the stats to understand what happened here. Ajax had 55 per cent possession. They registered 26 total shots to Sion's 11. Fifteen shots on target from Ajax compared to four from Sion. Twenty-two shots inside the box from Ajax. Twenty-two. Sion's goalkeeper made nine saves. Nine. And still conceded five.

Ajax had 21 key passes to Sion's six. They put 8 accurate crosses into the box compared to Sion's three. Their attackers created ten big chances and still missed five of them. The thing is, when you are that dominant in terms of attacking output, you will score. You always will. The only surprise was that it took until the 54th minute to reach five.

Sion's defenders had a nightmare. Ajax had 90 attacks in total and 57 dangerous attacks. You cannot defend against that quality of pressure if your defensive shape is not right from the first whistle. Sion's was not right at any point.

What This Tells Us About Both Teams

Ajax were relentless. Four wins and a draw from their five completed Conference League matches coming into this fixture. They have scored 17 goals in that sample. They press, they create, and they finish. The standards in that attack are clear.

But the clean sheet record is a concern. Ajax have not kept one in any of their five completed Conference League matches. Conceding seven goals across those five games before tonight, and now another three tonight, tells you the defence needs to be sharper. You can win 5-3 and still have a problem. Ajax have a problem at the back. End of.

Sion arrived here having already lost to Ajax 2-4 in the first leg of this tie. They scored three tonight which shows there is some attacking desire in them. But three long-term or moderate injuries in their squad, combined with the loss of Regeer early in this match, left them short. Sion also came in with one loss, two wins, and two draws in their five completed Conference League matches. The quality gap between these two sides was always there. Tonight confirmed it brutally.

The Bet Review

All three signals lost. Under 2.5 goals lost at 3.25. BTTS No lost at 2.4. The away win lost too, though nobody serious was backing that at 8.5 with any real conviction. Eight goals. I backed unders on a game between two teams that had scored freely in nearly every Conference League match they had played. My logic was sound. The players decided otherwise. I am not changing my approach. Unders and clean sheets are still the right markets. You just need the right game. This was not it.