I wasn’t saying that Hansen is huge challenge, but he is a veteran goalkeeper whose career has stalled he isn’t necessarily done. He has over 200 games in this league, knows the language and no other transition issues to the league. The issue will be if Hamid makes the mistakes he still consistently makes and it costs the team points, the coach will be much likelier to give Hansen a shot, which was never going to happen in DC. The second issue is in your comment about 190 or so games. If you leave out the playoffs and the 8 in 2010, he has 176 regular season games while being a starter for 7 season. That averages 25.1 games a year. That means on average he missed 9 games a year due to injury (he only played more than 25 games twice... 2011 & 2014). He always got his job back right away with DC, but Hansen is performing and the team is winning, he may have to bide his time when coming back from injury.
it's not so much a question of the general quality of leagues, but the weakness of MLS is not the strikers or attacking midifelders but the quality of defending and goalkeepers in my opinion ... the only two keepers who I can remember having moved from Denmark to MLS was Jimmy Nielsen who was playing 2nd level in Denmark and was about to retire because he could not find a club in the Superliga ... and David Ousted who did not get his contract extended at Randers after they had just won promotion to the Superliga ... so two fairly good keepers who were never the less struggling in Denmark ... You will find plenty of keepers in the Superliga who are present NT keepers for their country, if not first, then 2nd or 3rd keepers... or they have been sold by Superliga clubs to the bigger leagues (like Finland 1st keeper Lukáš Hrádecký) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finland_national_football_team#Current_squad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceland_national_football_team#Current_squad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden_national_football_team#Current_squad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norway_national_football_team#Current_squad Hansen is probably now close to be where Jimmy Nielsen was in his career when he took an offer from MLS ... but he was great last season playing for Lyngby and even in the outskirts of the Danish NT back then : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denmark_national_football_team#Current_squad FCM are a top team in the Superliga and in need of a keeper of NT quality, which is surely why they signed Hamid, considering that Hansen has not done as well as they had expected when they signed him at the start of this season ... but it's not as easy to impress in the Superliga as a keeper as you perhaps would think ... it's a bit the same as with centre backs ..
So I'm curious as to what are all these mistakes Hamid keeps consistently making and what do you see as his weaknesses? Because from my perspective he is worth more points to his team than any GK in the league over the last couple of seasons. And as far as improving he's greatly improved in handling crosses, decision making on when to come out of goal, organizing defenders in front of him and distribution.
Denmark has some pretty solid keepers. Like the no.1 they have at Huddersfield and I recall also Thomas Sorensen (Sunderland/Aston Villa). Hopefully Hamid hits the ground running and can establish the no.1 spot
Didn't Jimmy Nielsen had some serious personal issues - gambling and other addictions - towards the end of his time in Denmark. He moved to the States for a fresh start after/about the time he dealt with them (which is NOT what sober addicts recommend, but it seemed to work for him). If you say Hansen was great for his other club last season, then he was but he wouldn't be the first player who can't adjust his game to a new tactical system or the coaching staff of his new club. He may slide down the rankings or the leagues or he may have a renaissance at a new club. From what I've seen, Hamid was a good keeper in a team that had an "in the comfort zone" air about it. That won't apply now; the Danish league is about the same level as Greece, a bit better than Sweden and a whole lot better than Scotland according to UEFA coefficients, and Midtjylland are all about development. It'll be "up or out" for the duration of his time there. .
... not to forget Casper Ankergren who recently retired but is now a GK coach at Brighton and the 33-yo former Man U keeper Anders Lindegaard who is now at Burnley ... and Jakob Haugaard at Stoke,... and Kasper Schmeichel obviously...
In Denmark he was known as "Casino-Jimmy" ... over a weekend he could win $500k one day and then lose it all the next day ... I don't believe he had any other addictions which he btw was sharing with his fellow team-mate back then, and now present head coach at AGF Aarhus, David Nielsen ..
I wish people would stop all these "this league is at the level of this league" comparisons ... Danish clubs are especially good at developing highly talented young centre backs, goalkeepers and attacking midfielders, which is why there is a fairly large export of these kind of players to England, Spain and Germany ... Scottish clubs are terrible at developing any kind of talent for export, but being close to England American players still seem to favor this league, also because they are paying good money to sign foreign players, not being able to develop much themself .. Dutch league clubs are comparable to MLS clubs in the way that they are more into a fast-paced attacking game than actually developing good defenders or keepers... but they are good at developing young players themself and do not sign older foreign "names" ... and because their population is 3 times bigger than Denmark they also got a few more top-level teams, while the teams at the bottom of the Dutch league are quite terrible ... Belgium have several top teams below the level of Danish FC København, but above the level of Brøndby, FCN or Nordsjælland, but mainly because the Danish clubs focus on developing young talents, while the Belgium clubs spend much more money on solid foreign players...
Mmmm, that's strange....When did any Danish defender got price tags like Stam, de Vrij, van Dijk, etc. Or when did a top 4 team from BuLi or Serie A buy defenders from 10th and 11th teams of the Danish league? Or why did PSV have to refuse goalie Zoet a transfer to La Liga or did Barca pay ridiculous money for the Ajax goalie. Van der Sar ring a bell too, perhaps?
I’d prefer to not go into the details here. I’ve made my arguments about his play in the GK thread in USN&A thread and more than happy to discuss there. Some of it was DC being poor and him making big saves, but that is not all there is to the position. I’d take quite a few GKs in MLS over Hamid and will be surprised if he has much to do with the national team... if he does, it will be due to improving a lot in the next few years. His ranking vs mls GKs has been declining over the last few years (some probably due to his injuries). Season Winner, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth 2014 Bill Hamid, Nick Rimando, Steve Clark, Jaime Penedo, NA 2015 Luis Robles, David Ousted, Bill Hamid, Chris Konopka, NA 2016 Andre Blake, Luis Robles, Tim Howard, Bill Hamid, David Bingham 2017 Tim Melia, Andre Blake, Stefan Frei, Alex Bono, Sean Johnson My initial comments in this thread were meant to show interest in how he will handle adversity if/when it arises. I actually think this is a very good move for him. If he hits a rough patch, he should be able to overcome it. If he’d have gone to a bigger league, he could lose significant amount of playing time. Howard is an example of a guy who took too big a jump and it cost him quite a bit of time.
Lyngby had just been promoted to the Superliga when they sold Frederik Sørensen to Juventus and Per Krøldrup was playing 2nd level for B93 when he was sold to Udinese, so it's not unusual that Danish teams, even below the level of the Superliga, are selling centre backs to the bigger leagues. I think we can agree that the Dutch league produce highly talented players, but as also written, the Netherlands got 3 times the population of Denmark, and so there are a few more top teams in the league and the transfer fees get bigger, but I was not talking about Ajax or PSV, but the quality of defending at the average and smaller teams in the league ... just go look at the topscorers list in the Eredivise in the past . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eredivisie#Top_scorers The 21 goals by Nicolai Jørgensen last season, was the lowest for a top-scorer in 20 years, while in Denmark the top-scorer only manage to get past 19 goals every 5 years or so and Jørgensen himself never managed to get past 15 goals in the Superliga even playing for the absolute top team.... Eredivise clubs are just not known in Europe for their great defensive qualities ... in 2015-16 Southampton had no problem squashing Vitesse defensively both home and away (and 5-0 in all) in the 3rd Qualifying round for the Europa league, in the very next round Southampton got bumped off (1-1 and 0-1) by a very defensively strong looking FCM team ... and look at AZ Alkmaar losing 2-11 to Lyon over two legs in Europa league last season, also getting spanked defensively by Zenit...
Well, a reputed killer in La Liga and BuLi and CL Makaay didnot manage to score that amount of goals in two seasons for Feyenoord. So numbers on its own donot mean much. Vitesse had a Greek player (Machlas iirc) that scored madly (in a team that was very mediocre), but when transferred to Ajax with superior attacking support did get less than halve the number of what he deserved the topscorer title with. So comparing means nothing without proper context.
Numbers, numbers without context. Feyenoord a few years ago with a very young defense got murdered by PSV with 10-0. Those same kids a few years later reached the semi finals of the WC2014 and were unbeaten. One of those kids was de Vrij, now a defender the cream of the clubs are chasing. Some times your education gets very nasty, but your quality is defined by what you learn from it, not by that result in the past.
You can always go find players who do not fit the general statistics, but a top-scorers list does not lie about how easy it is to score goals in a league ...
The rest of my response was general observations and my intention in my posts. His weaknesses are many of the basic fundamentals of the position... footwork, positioning, timing, over committing, “clean hands” (rebounds given), etc. here is a search of the thread with posts by me referencing Hamid. They started in 2015 as I was responding to an over zealous poster claiming he was unfairly not getting called into the national team... of course ignoring that he was injured for just about every camp. I followed the goals he conceded over the next few seasons and wasn’t that pretty. https://www.bigsoccer.com/threadloom/search?query=Hamid thread:1847474 user:"bsky22"&tab=824 Here is a post with videos (unfortunately some of them have been taken down). It is quite easy to find multiple examples of goals being conceded by him when being poorly positioned, not set when shot taken, from unnecessary rebounds, committing early, etc.
Well, that's true, but if a player from leagues and CL rounds supposedly far better in defending than Eredivisie clubs is murdering those defenses, but coming here doesnot get serious numbers it means something: donot look at numbers without analyzing the circumstances leading to that number. You talk like an English EPL clubmanager that only looks at the number and buys a guy expecting the same. It is lazy and doesnot work.
Well .. I can tell you that much, it's a bad sign when a player like Nicolai Jørgensen is able to become top-scorer in the Dutch league, because he do not have the quality to play in any of the bigger leagues ... this he has already shown in the past and when playing in and for Denmark ... If I was an English PL manager I would stay well clear of forwards from both the Dutch and the Danish league at the moment ..including Kasper Dolberg ...
@Ceres, how much would you wager Hamid might be earning at the club? He turned down a 3 year $2.1 million dollar deal with his former club. He'd have been 2nd highest paid keeper in the league.
Somewhere in the range of between $350k to $500k a year ... I can't see them pay a keeper more than that ... he made just around $400k a year in his last MLS season I believe...
Yes. He especially improved the year Preston Burpo was the GK coach. In my view, since that season, the improvement has been minimal. In other words, bsky has it right.
The GK coach at FCM is Nikolai Pold ... he came to the club a few years back from AC Horsens where he helped develop Frederik Rønnow, who is the Danish NT 2nd keeper right now behind Kasper Schmeichel, but slightly ahead of Huddersfield keeper Jonas Lössl ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denmark_national_football_team#Current_squad
The 28-yo Norwegian NT 3rd keeper Sten Grytebust has been selected as 'keeper of the Year' 2017 in Danish football, getting 58 of 75 possible points in the vote ... the 25-yo Danish NT 2nd keeper Frederik Rønnow, (mentioned above) came in second getting 53 points. while Swedish NT 1st keeper Robin Olsen (who won last years award) came in 3rd https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Det_Gyldne_Bur Brøndby have been getting several offers from abroad on Frederik Rønnow this year, including one from Crystal Palace, but they do not want to let him go before the end of this season because they have not had this big a chance to win the Championship and qualify for CL in many years, considering FC Københavns poor form... as the replacement for Robin Olsen, who FCK expect to sell after the WC in Russia, they have already signed the 24-yo Finland NT 2nd keeper Jesse Joronen, who will join the club for a $1 million transfer fee from Horsens at the end of the season ... excellet deal by Horsens btw, that got Joronen on a free transfer from Fulham only 6 month ago ...
i agree with playmaker....look at a player like mo saied (who I think is very good and will most likely do well in denmark)....he just signed in the superliga. this is a player who couldnt really stick with expansion team minnesota united this year....he's kinda been a journeyman in MLS for the past few seasons.....and he leaves MLS ...to sign...in Denmark. Hamid, on the other hand, is much more accomplished. he's won GK of the year (2014)...he's been capped for USMNT multiple times.....he has a lot of solid seasons in MLS under his belt...... if Europe can't differentiate between these types of players it is a failure of european leagues, imo. apparently they just look at all MLS players with the same lens. a player like tim howard went straight from mls to manchester united so i dont know why euro teams wouldnt look to MLS.....it smacks of bias and discrimination, imo.