Mokio and Brandt come off the bench to win Michel’s first Eredivisie match at ten-man Zwolle
Three of Ajax’s summer signings came off the bench at the MAC3PARK Stadion, and two of them settled the opening weekend.
Aug 9, 2026
For an hour at the MAC3PARK Stadion, Míchel’s first Eredivisie match looked like the awkward kind. Ajax had the ball and very little to show for it, PEC Zwolle kept getting into the spaces behind them, and the home crowd was doing most of the talking. Then Sherel Floranus went through the back of Lucas Rosa’s calf in the 57th minute, the referee reached straight for red, and it became a different game.
Four changes, and a bench that cost real money
Míchel did not wait. Between the 61st and 67th minutes he made four substitutions, sending on Julian Brandt, Jorthy Mokio, Mika Godts and Marcos Leonardo, then added Tolu Arokodare on 73 minutes. Three of those five arrived in Amsterdam this summer.
It took Arokodare three minutes to justify his. The Nigerian, on a season-long loan from Wolves with a buy option reported at around 17 million pounds, laid the ball off for Mokio to open the scoring on 76. Brandt, a free signing once his Borussia Dortmund contract expired and the subject of a summer tug of war Ajax won against Leeds United and Fulham, finished it in the fifth minute of stoppage time after a combination with Godts.
Zwolle’s ten men held out for nearly 20 minutes after the sending-off, which says something for their organisation and something else about how blunt Ajax were before the bench arrived. Míchel spent five seasons at Girona, took them to third in La Liga in 2023-24 and went down with them last season, and he has arrived on a deal to 2028 with a brief to make Ajax control matches. Sunday’s first half was not that. The last half hour, once the numbers were uneven, mostly was.
Ter Stegen starts, and keeps a clean sheet
The other headline wore gloves. Marc-André ter Stegen made his Ajax debut in goal, days after a loan from Barcelona that took most of the window to negotiate and stalled more than once over who was paying his wages. He had one serious piece of work to do, tipping away a Tobias Sommer header from a Dylan Mbayo cross shortly before half-time, and did enough on his first appearance to catch the eye of the away support.
There is a neat symmetry to it. Míchel and ter Stegen crossed paths briefly at Girona before both ended up here, one rebuilding after a relegation, the other after two years in which injuries decided more than his goalkeeping did. The 34-year-old ruptured the patellar tendon in his right knee in September 2024, missed the rest of that season, and then lost a chunk of the next one to a back problem.
So a quiet afternoon with one good save and nothing conceded is close to the ideal opening. The tests come later. Zwolle created chances in the first half without finishing them, and better sides will not be as generous.
What it actually tells us
Not a great deal, honestly, which is true of most opening weekends. Ajax won away, kept a clean sheet and got goals from two players who were not at the club three months ago. They also spent an hour being tidy and toothless against a side that finished 15th last season, and they only found a way through once that side was a man short.
The encouraging read is the depth. Brandt, Arokodare, Marcos Leonardo, Caio Henrique and a returning Daley Blind is a serious summer of recruitment, and having that much of it sitting on the bench in August is not the worst problem to carry into a season. The sceptical read is that Ajax finished fifth last season on 56 points, 28 behind PSV, and their first-choice attack needed the entire bench to break down ten men.
Both readings survive a 2-0 win in Zwolle. Míchel gets three points, a clean sheet and a fortnight of goodwill, and the first real answer arrives when Ajax play someone who still has eleven players on the pitch at the hour mark.