Kaká upbeat after Madrid trounce Ajax

Kaká was delighted by his contribution to what had been a "very good week so far" for Real Madrid CF following their 4-1 UEFA Champions League Group D victory at AFC Ajax. Niklas Moisander scored the Dutch side's only goal in their last 450 minutes of football against the Spanish champions, but was less than impressed with his team's performance.

Kaká, Real Madrid midfielder
This has been a very good week for us so far. We recorded an impressive victory against [RC Deportivo La] Coruña and today we secured a fine result as well. We're top of the group, which is considered to be the toughest in the Champions League. And now we can look forward to giving our all in the Clásico [against FC Barcelona at the weekend] because it's a crucial match for us.

I think I'm headed in the right direction. Today I showed that the work I've been doing is paying off and I'm regaining the confidence of the coach, and that's what I always hoped would happen. I want to gain his trust, play more, and bit by bit I think things will turn out the way they should.

Niklas Moisander, Ajax defender
I can't really be happy about my goal as we lost 4-1. We played one of our worst games at the wrong time because you can't give the ball away so much against Real Madrid, but that's exactly what we did and they are so dangerous on the counterattack. Maybe we were too nervous. It's very challenging playing against players like Cristiano Ronaldo – together with Lionel Messi, he's one of the best players in the world – but all their attackers are strong and fast. You have to be sharp the whole game, yet they scored four goals so we can't be satisfied.

Siem de Jong, Ajax midfielder
We only played our own game for about ten minutes, after we scored, and for the other 80 we couldn't. We hardly ever managed to find our free men, and maybe we should have taken a few more risks, but that's also dangerous – you saw in the second half that we had a free-kick in their half and ten seconds later they scored. Before that we had a great chance. I couldn't get a touch to the cross but it fell for Danny [Hoesen] and his effort went narrowly over. If that had gone in then the crowd would have got behind us even more and who knows what might have happened?

We've now played Madrid three seasons in a row but I have to say that today we didn't show much improvement on the previous games. In fact, I thought we did better last year, especially at the beginning of the match at the Bernabéu, so it's disappointing we didn't do more this time.