PSV punish nine-man Ajax to reclaim Eredivisie title

PSV captured their third Eredivisie title in four seasons as a 3-0 win over close rivals Ajax secured an unassailable 10-point lead with three games remaining.

Gaston Pereiro, Luuk De Jong and Steven Bergwijn combined to seal the silverware in fine style as they emphatically ended Feyenoord’s stint as champions.

Second-placed Ajax entered Sunday’s encounter as the only club capable of catching the leaders, but their hopes of reducing the gap back to four points faded in the space of 15 first-half minutes.

Pereiro bundled in the opener midway through the half before Luuk De Jong headed in Joshua Brenet’s cross to kick-start the celebrations at Philips Stadion.

Bergwijn added polish to the scoreline by poking in a third nine minutes after the interval and Ajax’s bid to prolong the hosts’ wait only unravelled further in the final 10 minutes.

Nicolas Tagliafico earned a second yellow and Siem De Jong received a straight red for a crude studs-up challenge, meaning the Amsterdam outfit had two players dismissed in a single Eredivisie match for the first time in their history.

The incidents failed to overshadow PSV’s success, though, with Phillip Cocu claiming a third domestic triumph as head coach to go with the three he won at the club as a player, bringing PSV to within nine titles of Ajax’s record of 33.

10 – @PSV have won ten of the 19 Eredivisie championships since the turn of the century. Command. pic.twitter.com/rloCIF6tyu

— OptaJohan (@OptaJohan) April 15, 2018