Confidential for the lurkers from the official Eintracht board: I have no account on eintracht.com Sorry for interruption, everyone else continue with your regularily schedulded Boyd thread, please
NSC confirms that Rapid Vienna are interested in a loan deal for Boyd. Seltzer also says that talks with one club are getting serious, but he doesn't know whether it is Vienna or another suitor. Edit: There is also a related article on MLSS about Boyd's transfer saga.
Just found this piece on Boyd that was published yesterday: Terrence Boyd heiß umworben Perhaps a German speaker could give us a translation -- or at least a rundown of the main points along with a translation of the quotes from Wagner?
Not much concrete information. Main points: -Boyd won't meet up with the Dortmund team at the 13th of June because he'll have an extended holiday because of Nationalteam duty with the US -possibility that Boyd won't play for Dortmund II anymore because he has offers from professional clubs in Germany and abroad (no concrete clubs named) -Boyd has contract until 2013 but Dortmund seem willing to let him go before that to improve his situation (no talk of a loan, as far as I can see, but a direct transfer) Wagner knows "that Terrence currently is confronted with offers, no wonder for a player of his quality that has scored many goals in the Regionalliga". Also, Dortmund have already made contingency plans for Boyd leaving, signing Durm from Mainz. Wagner: "We don't have to get active on the transfer market, even should Terrence leave. Additionally we have another above- average attacking player/striker in Marvin Ducksch."
Seth Vertelney from Goal.com tweeted that Klinsmann said Jurgen Klopp told him Boyd would've played with the first team but Mario Gotze and Robert Lewandowski kept him out of the team.
I think the top teams could compete in BL2, the bottom teams are rather comparable to our 3. Liga. There are some interesting people for this comparison. Franco Foda, Lautern's new coach, worked in Graz for some years. He had offers from Lautern and Austria Vienna now, and chose Lautern because he "thought it's time to make a step up". The Austrian top scorer is Stefan Maierhofer, who played for Bayern II, Koblenz, Fürth and Duisburg before; a below average BL2 forward whose only freakish quality is 2.02 m. Austria's top player for some years was Rapid's captain Steffen Hofmann, a German, also from Bayern II. Ridiculous stats, 80 goals and 134 assists in 291 games in Austria; a failure at 1860 in BL2 in his prime, he went back to Austria after half a year. I've been to Vienna a few weeks ago, watched a 2nd division game (including Gatt's former club Altach) and talked to some fans. Their second division ("1. Liga") isn't fully professional, the top teams are comparable to the German Regionalliga; so I think you could say Austrian Bundesliga ~ German BL2/3, Austrian 2nd division ~ German Regionalliga or below.
Re: Austrian top division I'd say it is a decent, mid- sized league, similar to Switzerland, Denmark, Cyprus and Israel in level. The top teams (Austria Wien, Rapid Wien, Sturm Graz, RB Salzburg) have a decent chance of playing relatively deep into the Europaleague, though not as far as say clubs from the leagues above such as Portugal, Russia, Ukraine, Netherlands, Belgium etc. Problem is the very large drop- off in quality between the top teams and the rest, a problem common in smaller leagues. There is only 10 teams in the first place, of which 5 average less than 5000 fans a game. As to whether it is better than the BL2 is very difficult to tell, because unlike with the European competitions, you have no clubs playing against each other, and thus no way to compare. Here is the webpage of the Austrian league: http://www.bundesliga.at/index.php?id=146&league=bl1&season=20112012&team=, unfortunately seems to be only available in German.
Similar? Yes, but noticeably worse. Switzerland, and Denmark are a solid step ahead of the Austrian BuLi. He's certainly a good prospect. I think that the fact that Dortmund is trying to loan him out despite qualifying for the 3. Liga is an indication that they think he's ready for the next level. The Austrian BuLi might be a slightly better situation than 3. Liga, but personally, I think Boyd needs to find a slightly better league. I would think Switzerland is a better option at the moment. MLS would be an interesting option, but it won't happen because all MLS loans need to have buy/sell clauses.
He is completely correct; it's a bit unfair to say, "Boyd would have started for the Bundesliga champions if they didn't have world class players starting ahead of him."
During the game tonight the broadcasters mentioned that Klinsmann said Boyd could be moving to another team in the Bundesliga.
How did he play today? That scoreline was impressive vs Scotland. I didn't see the macth but I was told the USMNT should have won by an even greater margin.
I thought he was okay. Active, aggressive, and strong. Seemed a half-step slow mentally at certain points where maybe a more experienced player could've made more of the opportunities he had. He did manage to squeeze off 1-2 shots in difficult situations though. Overall, not an amazing performance, but encouraging all the same.
He impressed me with how well he held the ball up. I thought that was a weakness of his. He was constantly putting himself in dangerous positions. He probably needs to get used to the amount of time he has in the box when under pressure at the int'l level; the ball got caught under his feet, I thought, right before he pulled the trigger a couple of times. He probably should have had a goal today. As much as it pains me to say this, as a big Agudelo supporter, he's ahead of Agudelo in terms of his understanding of the center forward position.
Pleasantly surprised. For being his first real international run-out and with no professional appearances, exceeded my expectations.
Agreed. That said, he's thinking way too much and is a bit too antsy atm. When he overran that ball in the box I almost fell out of the chair (well, bed). He'll be a good one. Just needs some first team ball.
He got in some good spots and had some good moments. He was also really active in pursuing Scotland's back line and had the awareness to drop back to midfield when Bradley blew past him behind Scotland's defense trying to get on the end of a ball at one point. I don't rate Altidore ahead of him(Altidore's the #1) but that's something I don't see from Altidore. When he pressures he's lazy about it and barely gets to a jog and I've never seen him have the awareness to drop back when its necessary when a midfielder pushes forward. He was also very active in the box but was unfortunately just never in a good spot to take a good shot. You had that chance where Donovan crossed it in but it was just behind him and when it was crossed in by I think Johnson close to the top of the box and he tracked back to grab it and unfortunately got in Donovan's way who looked like had a good shot. His best moment was when he had his back to goal and took that touch with the outside of his right foot that set him up perfectly to take a shot with his left although the shot went wide.
The Scottish commentators were quite complementary about his performance, especially his strength and work rate. IMHO he needed to show more conviction in his play; at times when in possession he looked as if he wasn't convinced his good pass/shot/layoff would be good enough and he needed an extra second to make up his mind. All in all though, he looked like one for the (near) future.
I DVR'd the match and just got done viewing it. I was surprised to see Boyd start and was pleasantly surprised by his performance. His work rate, ability to the ball, his willingness to take on defenders, and recognition to check to the ball allowing an attacker run into his vacated space was superb. But with all they said, Boyd was channelling his energy either too much or not at the appropriate time. He just needed to relax and let the game come to him. Boyd needed to think about the play he wanted to make and not the play he didn't want to make. This understanding will come as he's exposed to first team football. The talent is evident and no doubt the future is extremely bright.