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Go Ahead Eagles welcome AZ Alkmaar to De Adelaarshorst on Thursday 23 April 2026 in the VriendenLoterij Eredivisie, and there’s plenty riding on it for both sides. The hosts sit 11th with 36 points, safely above real trouble but still with work to do if they want to finish the campaign with some purpose. AZ are 6th on 48 points and still chasing a stronger finish near the European places. That’s the broad picture. Neither side can afford to drift.
For Go Ahead, this is a chance to turn a decent season into something a little sharper. Melvin Boel’s team have been lively at home all year and the crowd in Deventer has had plenty to shout about. AZ arrive with their own demands, though. Leeroy Echteld’s side have been juggling league duty with a Conference League run and a cup tie, and they’ve been scoring goals with real ease. The problem? They don’t keep things tidy for long. That’s the tension here.
This fixture has also produced goals before. The most recent meeting ended 2-2 in Alkmaar in December, while the sides traded a wild 3-5 and a couple of heavy AZ wins before that. You wouldn’t expect a cagey night. Not with these two.
Go Ahead Eagles are coming off a statement win, and they badly needed one. Their 5-0 demolition of PEC Zwolle on 5 April was the kind of home performance that changes the mood around a club. They were rampant from the first minutes, scoring through Stefán Ingi Sigurðarson, Søren Tengstedt and Victor Kaj Edvardsen before the break was done, then adding two more after half-time. It wasn’t a smash-and-grab. It was a proper hammering. The shot count was lopsided too, with 15 attempts and 12 on target, which tells you how sharp they were in front of goal.
That result came after a mixed little run, though. They had gone down 2-0 at FC Utrecht, then responded with that 6-0 home rout of NAC Breda. Before the Utrecht defeat, they’d also lost 4-1 at home to FC Twente, which is the sort of scoreline that can easily expose you if you’re not switched on. Still, their season has had a clear pattern: when Go Ahead are on it at home, they can overwhelm teams quickly. Their home record is strong enough too — six wins, six draws and only three defeats, with 33 goals scored and 20 conceded. That’s a healthy return. It’s not a team spending every week on the back foot.
What stands out most is the balance between threat and looseness. Go Ahead can score. There’s no question about that. Fifty league goals overall is a decent total for a side in 11th, and their home output is better still. But they’ve also shown a habit of letting games breathe too much, especially against sides that carry a proper attacking punch. Conceding 20 at home is respectable, yet the clean-sheet count isn’t a blank page. AZ will fancy themselves to create chances here, and if Go Ahead get dragged into a more open game, that’s where the trouble starts.
AZ Alkmaar arrive with a spring in their step after a 5-1 cup win over NEC Nijmegen on 19 April. That was a convincing scoreline, even if the league context is different. The goals were shared around, which is what you want to see from a side with their attacking depth: Mees de Wit opened the scoring, Sven Mijnans, Peer Koopmeiners, Koki Ogawa and Kees Smit all got involved, and Troy Parrott added another late on. There was a VAR disallowed goal in the mix too. In short, they were constantly on the front foot.
Their recent league form has been less clean, though the bigger picture is still strong. They beat SC Heerenveen 3-0 on 12 April, a tidy home win that followed their 2-2 draw with Shakhtar Donetsk in the Conference League. Before that came a 3-0 defeat away to Shakhtar and a 3-0 league loss at FC Groningen. The sequence tells its own story. AZ can look devastating when things click, but they’ve also had some rough away days, especially when the game turns physical or starts to move away from their preferred rhythm. Mind you, that doesn’t mean they’ve been flat. Far from it.
Their league numbers are solid enough: 14 wins, six draws and 10 defeats, with 52 goals scored and 45 conceded. That’s a side that can hurt almost anyone, yet doesn’t shut the door very often. The away record is the big caution sign. Six wins, one draw and eight losses on the road, with 18 scored and 24 conceded. Those aren’t numbers that inspire complete trust. They’re good for a team that wants to play on the front foot, but they don’t scream reliability. The upside is obvious. AZ do create, and they do score away from home often enough. The downside is just as plain. They give opponents a route into the match.
Still, if you’re looking for one clean reason to expect them to score in Deventer, it’s this: they’ve been finding ways through even during busy stretches. The Conference League tie with Shakhtar showed that they’re comfortable in a game with tempo and transitions, and their 5-1 cup win proves the squad isn’t short on belief. Can they keep it tidy for 90 minutes? That’s the real question. Usually, the answer is no.
This fixture has a fairly clear recent pattern: goals. The sides drew 2-2 in Alkmaar in December, Go Ahead lost 3-0 at home to AZ in May 2025, then produced one of the more eye-catching results in the cup by beating AZ 5-3 in Alkmaar a couple of weeks later. That alone says plenty. These meetings don’t tend to stay quiet for long.
AZ have also had the better of the broader historical sample, with 3-1, 4-1, 5-1 and 2-0 wins all sitting in the recent record. But Go Ahead have shown they can land a punch, and they did it in the cup meeting last year. The common thread is simple enough. Neither defence has usually dominated this matchup. That won’t surprise anyone who’s watched the last few meetings.
We’re backing Both Teams To Score at 1/2 here, and it feels like the right call. Go Ahead have been strong enough at home to land a goal against most visitors, while AZ bring enough attacking quality — and enough defensive looseness — to make that market very live. The xG projection of 1.3 for Go Ahead and 1.5 for AZ points in the same direction. So does the head-to-head pattern, with five of the last seven meetings landing BTTS. Plain and simple, both sides look capable of scoring.
The scoreline call is 1-1. That might sound conservative given the attacking profile of both teams, but it fits the shape of the match: Go Ahead are dangerous at De Adelaarshorst, AZ are usually good for chances, and both defences have given opponents openings too often. If you want a slightly more ambitious angle, Over 2.5 Goals is the natural alternative, but BTTS is the cleaner play because it doesn’t demand the game to turn chaotic. One goal each is the likeliest outcome.
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