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PREVIEW OF AZ ALKMAAR
If you thought that Holland was all tulips, red-light districts and coffee-shops, then you're wrong. There are cheese markets as well and Alkmaar has the biggest in Holland.
Cheese markets are great. You can get all sorts of cheese in large blocks or small pieces and if you are a cheese connoisseur, then Alkmaar is the place to be.
Tha Alkmaar cheese market. Check out those morris-dancing outfits.
These guys in the picture are referred to as "cheese porters" and members of their various guilds have been helping to bring cheese buyers and sellers together for at least 600 years.
Alkmaar has got a very small football stadium, the Alkmaarder Hout with an away end capacity of only 600 standing or 350 sitting. The travelling Boro army of over 2000 will have to make do with the large screens in the cheese market or in Amsterdam centre.
The average home attendance went up almost 7% last season to a staggering 8,267, on the back of the club's remarkable UEFA Cup achievement. That's about as many as we get for a reserve match.
Considering the demand for tickets, especially for the away end, it would have been nice if they had switched the match to the nearby Amsterdam Arena and given all those who wanted to be at the game a fair chance of getting in.
This is undoubtedly Boro's toughest UEFA Cup group game this season. AZ reached the semi-final last season and are going great guns in the Dutch league at the moment. They lie in third place, just three points behind leaders PSV Eindhoven and second-placed Feyenoord after twelve matches.
Of those twelve matches, AZ have won eight, drawn two and lost two, scoring twenty-six goals in the process but conceding twenty-one. They have scored four or more in four matches this season, including an impressive 7-0 mauling of FC Groningen and have failed to score only three times this campaign in all competitions.
AZ currently lie in second place in this season's Group D having played only one match so far. They recorded a comfortable 2-1 away win against Boro's last UEFA Cup opponents Dnipro.
Noteable names in the AZ squad include former Rangers man Shota Arveladze, striker Danny Koevermans who bagged twenty-four goals in twenty-nine games for Sparta Rotterdam last season and Jan Kromkamp who spent time with Villareal last season.
But the biggest name in the side is manager Louis van Gaal whose record at Ajax, FC Antwerp, Sparta, Ajax and Barcelona speaks for itself. It is undoubtedly his influence that has propelled the club to achieve it's greatest heights ever.
So what of Boro's chances of a third straight group win tonight? We're playing a team on a high who are unbeaten at home and have a class act as manager but we should prevail with at least a draw. There is talk of Steve McClaren not fielding his strongest side tonight in an effort to reverse our still poor after Europe form.
If he does so, then he will be resting the bug guns against easily the toughest opponent of the group but as Boro are almost certainly through to the next round anyway, prudence may prevail meaning that we may have to settle for one point only, which in the view of many would do very nicely thank you very much.
My tip for the match. AZ Alkmaar 1 Middlesbrough 1.
Harry Haverton.
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