On the evening of December 7, the final round of the Champions League Group Stage was played.
Before the match, Ajax had a three-point lead over Lyon. Therefore, they only needed to draw with Real Madrid at home to advance to the Champions League round of sixteen, while Lyon had to beat Dinamo Zagreb by a wide margin away from home and pray that Real Madrid defeated Ajax. Only then could they advance on goal difference.
Real Madrid, just as they had against Dinamo Zagreb, still fielded a lineup of substitutes and rotated players.
This was something everyone knew before the match, even though Yang Yang was included in the squad.
The match entered a fast tempo from the very beginning. Neither side held anything back, and Ajax showed their determination as well. But in the fourteenth minute, Kaka played a through ball, and Robben scored one-on-one to give Real Madrid the lead.
Ajax chased desperately afterward, but in the forty-first minute, Ibrahimovic received a pass from Di Maria and scored one-on-one, extending the lead to two-nil.
After the sides switched ends in the second half, Ajax continued to fight tenaciously for a while. But in the sixty-second minute, Xabi Alonso passed the ball to Robben, who took it past goalkeeper Vormer and fired into the empty net. Three-nil.
That goal completely killed the match.
At the other stadium, Lyon were steamrolling their opponents away from home and scoring goal after goal. They were temporarily far ahead of Dinamo Zagreb, and it looked as though it would be a resounding victory. This also meant that Ajax were drifting farther and farther from the knockout stage.
The entire Amsterdam Arena was filled with grief. Every Ajax fan regretted the team's failure to reach the Champions League knockout stage, but they had