Football
PA Sport 9y

U.S. international Aron Johansson fires AZ into Europa League

AZ Alkmaar took advantage of Feyenoord's final-day defeat by winning 4-1 at Excelsior to claim the automatic Europa League spot in the Eredivisie.

AZ raced into a 2-0 lead courtesy of goals from U.S. international Aron Johansson and Steven Berghuis before Markus Henriksen added a third to effectively seal the victory.

Jeffrey Gouweleeuw put through his own goal to give Excelsior some hope but that soon disappeared after Johansson added his second.

Feyenoord went into their last game with their fate in their own hands but a 3-0 loss at PEC Zwolle consigned them to the playoffs for the final Europa League place.

Ben Rienstra put the hosts in front before Rick Karsdorp was sent off and Tomas Necid tucked home the resultant penalty. Necid added gloss to a result which booked a play-off clash with Vitesse for Zwolle.

Feyenoord will now face Heerenveen, who dropped one place to seventh after a 3-1 defeat against FC Twente, who responded to Luciano Slagveer's early strike with three goals in five minutes from Hakim Ziyech (73, 74) and Orlando Engelaar (78).

Vitesse took a point in a six-goal thriller on home soil against FC Utrecht, Zakaria Labyad scoring a last-minute equaliser after Danny Verbeek appeared to have won it for the visitors in the 89th minute. Goals from Bart Ramselaar and Yassine Ayoub had earlier cancelled out Bertrand Traore's double.

PSV ended the season on 88 points after Georginio Wijnaldum's stoppage-time winner gave them a 3-2 victory at ADO Den Haag, with Luciano Narsingh and Luuk de Jong also netting for the champions and Oleksandr Yakovenko and Danny Bakker grabbing goals for the home side.

Basement side FC Dordrecht came from behind to stun second-placed Ajax, Rick van Haaren scoring the winner late on after Viktor Fischer and Sean Klaiber had exchanged goals.

Elsewhere, Willem II beat Cambuur Leeuwarden 2-1, FC Groningen ended their campaign with a stunning 5-4 victory at NAC Breda and Heracles were 1-0 victors against Go Ahead Eagles.

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