Bob (Roberto Martinez) probably has attended more Pro League matches by now than Wilmots during his whole tenure with us ... one of the ties he saw was the "Slag om Vlaanderen" ... well, it's more the "Battle of the Legionnaires" ... still Bob can be happy that so "many" Belgians started ... often, on Belgium's pitches, it's even worse. Most Belgian clubs put their trust in legionnaires that often turn out worse than the quality of Belgian youth going to waste at those same clubs ... it's only normal that moving abroad gains an extra alluring dimension despite the hurdles of such a move at a young age ... hard to tell how much potential is being lost exactly but the lack of #InYouthWeTrust is baffling ... as it's easy to list several Belgian talents that came through in Belgian clubs, made a name for themselves and that are playing for big clubs ... e.g. Kompany, Lukaku, Witsel, Fellaini, Benteke, Batshuayi, Courtois, KDB, et al. ... struggling Beerschot, back when they were on financial drip from Ajax, saw the likes of Dembele, Nainggolan, Vermaelen, Vertonghen, Alderweireld, et al. come through in a very short timeframe ... even when including the unusual case of Beveren's Ivorians, the list of legionnaires will be nowhere near as impressive as the one of Belgians that came/could have come through in recent times while sadly only a minority of starters in Belgian clubs were Belgians... it's time, long overdue actually, to add a rule that a Belgian club can only contract a legionnaire if he's among the club's top earners/a very high min. wage (adds value to the club/increases the level of the Pro League) ... currently, our talents might be better off when they leave as soon as they turn 16 than when they stay at Belgian clubs and become ghosts ... providing the world with the finest of legionnaire dross is a shite "vision" for Belgian football. PS despite Van Rhijn's great free kick (the next 100 will end up in the parking lot), didn't Brugge learn from the Beerschot debacle ... IIRC it was GBA's chairman at the time who said that the players/flops that Ajax sent over were worse than what remained at Beerschot ... and that's after Ajax took all of their players that were at least half decent ... in a deal that even in medieval times would have been considered plunder and pillage overkill ... wouldn't be surprised if Ajax had asked for Prima Nocte as well ... since Sneijder and VDV came through in what seems a century ago Ajax's "eigen kweek" (at the club before turning 16yo) has been utter shite ... e.g. Denswil should be nowhere near a pitch.
Dodi Lukebakio ... born and raised in Asse near Brussels while receiving his football education in Belgian clubs ... has chosen to join Congo ... Anderlecht have been hugely successful in youth competitions and Lukebakio played a big part in those ... he's regarded as an immense talent among his peers and he's eager to break into the first team ... yet as his chances at Anderlecht were limited, he was loaned out to Toulouse ... where he isn't even allowed to play at all (unless he has at least 1 cap) ... so he opted to play for Congo and could be cap-tied this week in the game against Libya... SMH.
Accord de principe entre la #FAF et Marc #Wilmots! La signature du contrat devrait se faire demain midi à Bruxelles ! #Fennecs #Algérie #CAN— Julien Chaput (@Julienchaps) October 20, 2016
Lukaku scored his 50th for Everton and now has* ... ... 100 league goals (67 in the Premier League - 17 for WBA and 50 for Everton) ... 44 league assists (31 in the Premier League) ... 26 goals in cup competitions (16 goals in Europe) ... 8 assists in cup competitions (7 assists in Europe) That's 126 goals and 52 assists in his club career ... 8 goals and 2 assists in competitive ties for country ... 12 goals and 2 assists in friendlies That's 146 goals and 56 assists for club and country ... impressive ... even more so considering Lukaku was born in 1993 ... and while he's already up there among the most prolific 23yo goal scorers (scored more than e.g. C.Ronaldo, Suarez, Ibrahimovic, et al.), he's getting better and better in his still-young professional career ... looking forward to how much he'll add to his tally this season, if he makes the logical next step to a bigger club and how he'll perform surrounded by better and more experienced players than the ones he's played with up till now. * excluding 7 goals and 1 assist in the Premier Reserve League after he just moved to Chelsea
Moving away from the mistakes of the Wilmots era ... http://www.catenaccio.nl/dit-is-wat-belgie-wilmots-kwalijk-kan-nemen/ The Formation of the future? Antonio Conte's favoured 3-4-3 is now football's fashionable formation MOTD Analysis of Chelsea's 3-4-3 vs Manchester United Conte and Pep in spielverlagerung.de Zonalmarking analysis, in particular Martinez’s attacking version at Wigan For #cypbel I will just do the Belgian #passmap.A 4-2-3-1 with KDB & Hazard operating in the same zone. pic.twitter.com/muATprTEHf— 11tegen11 (@11tegen11) September 7, 2016 Belgium were better than Bosnia, but the final score negates the chances Bosnia had here.#xGplot #passmap pic.twitter.com/t3wjD7j0yh— 11tegen11 (@11tegen11) October 9, 2016
Turned 17yo a few months ago ... today he made Stoke's matchday squad ... if more Belgian talents are getting a look in abroad instead of the domestic league ... the Pro League clubs lack vision.
Laurent Ciman who plays for Montreal in MLS. Is he a regular call up for the nation now? I recall he started in 1 of your games for the Euros. I'm quite surprised though that he gets chances since he's not playing in Europe.
https://apnews.com/1f7ad70f265d4847...n=SocialFlow&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=AP Sounds like England will wean off their dependence on legionnaires (regardless of Brexit) ... the low percentages of legionnaires in France, Holland, Germany and Spain reflect the importance given to training local talents and the expertise that these countries possess in this field ... Belgium, England, Turkey and the US however are recruiting legionnaires to the detriment of local talents ... which can also mask outrageous short-term speculation on the transfer market (more so in smaller leagues like ours) ... this tends to undermine a club's future ... legionnaires are not recruited to bolster the team in the long term but rather to showcase and transfer them for profit ... often benefitting agents/transfer networks even more than the club ... the financial stakes of transfers tend to undermine local talents ... because local talents are less interesting from a commercial perspective as they are readily available ... the imbalance between local talents and legionnaires, compounded by poor results, can result in weakening the club’s role as a means of identifying with a given town or territory, as well as in a loss of support from fans ... even the legendary teams weren't just the best legionnaires around but these teams had several home-grown players leave their mark on modern football ... most recently Barcelona. It's important to change mentalities within our clubs ... training local talents should be considered as a valuable long term investment and not just seen as an additional constraint or as social work to sell to local authorities without any sporting return sought or hoped for ... Germany's reboot got this very much right and their NT is sharing in the rewards ... to encourage our clubs not to take the easy road ... to fall into the trap of recklessly importing legionnaires and selling their souls to the markets ... training local talents must be better protected and better paid ... the main beneficiaries of the flows of legionnaires are the top clubs of the big leagues anyway ... these clubs concentrate talent even more strongly than in the past ... this process is at the heart of the deterioration of competitive balance in Europe ... and it's a stain on the Belgian clubs and the Pro League to keep facilitating it. PS the Atlantic League is back on the agenda: http://www.cityam.com/255304/dominant-domestically-crushed-continent-why-atlantic-league
Our talents born on or after 1 January 1999 ... rumoured to be a very promising class (they say the best talents come through in groups, as they push each other to constantly improve, yada yada) ... many left Belgium as soon as they turned 16 ... Indy Boonen and Moutha-Sebtaoui (MUFC), Bongiovanni (Monaco), Vanheusden, Emmers, Van Den Eynden (Inter ... also Miangue but he's too old), Albanese (Hoffenheim), Verlinden (Stoke), De Bie (Spurs), Antonucci (Ajax) ... then we have Anderlecht with Patoulidis, Mayanga, Lutonda, Corryn, Svilar et al. ... Club with the likes of Fadiga, Openda et al. ... etc. ... you hear more about the kiddies that left Belgium though. We're in Group 5
Belgian players, the most susceptible to experience an international transfer before 18 years of age ... the proportion of footballers who migrate abroad during their career is higher than ever ... an increasing number of footballers go abroad before the age of 18 without even having played in the first team of their employer club *keep in mind that our neighbours have much larger populations (e.g. there are roughly 8x as many Germans and 6x as many Frenchies) ... Belgium's 38 compared to our massive neighbours, Germany's 17 and France's 23, means we're excessively overrepresented ... even Holland, with more than 150% of our population, only saw 13 underaged talents try their luck elsewhere. Why do we hate our own kids? ... in Holland, the top destination for Belgian minors, they very much like the Belgian kiddies (BE to NL is the main axis of international migration for underaged talents) ... there are twice as many Belgians playing in the Eredivisie than Dutchies in our league while the heydays of Eredivisie Belgians are well behind us (with the likes of Alderweireld, Vertonghen, Vermaelen, Chadli, Mertens, Dembele, et al. plus all the others before them) ... and what's even more strange, Holland have one of the lowest percentages of legionnaires in Europe while Belgium, together with England, are the worst offenders when it comes to importing legionnaires to the detriment of local talents ... despite there being less Pro League clubs than Eredivisie clubs, there are roughly twice as many legionnaires in the Pro League ... Holland together with France, Italy, Germany and Spain (even English academies) are very much top destinations that young talents flock to searching for a better football education and a better future ... in stark contrast to Belgium's bottom rank ... compared to our neighbours, we're very much the odd one out. Conclusion ... players having left their country under the age of 18 have, on average, less rewarding careers than footballers who left later with more experience under their belt. This result indicates that the premature international migration of inexperienced players poses serious risks for both the footballers concerned and the teams recruiting them. Unfortunately, in spite of all sporting logic, in an overly speculative context where numerous actors make their living out of player transfers, the international flow of minors increases with each year. Stop robbing local talents of chances at home, also knowing they'll have worse prospects abroad ... sadly only a small minority of starters in Belgian clubs were Belgians while the list of Belgian talents that came through in Belgian clubs is far more impressive than the list of legionnaires. Stop enabling the hoarding of talents ... it's at the heart of the deterioration of competitive balance in Europe. Stop trafficking kiddies ... the EPFL, among many others, have resolutely condemned the detrimental problem that is the trafficking of minors. CIES Football Observatory Monthly Report: The international mobility of minors in football PS club-trained players don't get many minutes in Belgium ... Anderlecht still ranks 69th with about 30% of minutes in league matches going to club-trained players ... Belgium's best yet lots of room for improvement ... and Standard are runners-up yet linger near the bottom (No.81 out of 100 clubs) ... no other Belgian club made the top 100.
http://www.lavenir.net/cnt/dmf20161...y-interesse-roberto-martinez-pour-les-diables https://www.voetbalkrant.com/nl/nie...rode-duivels-roberto-martinez-toont-interesse https://www.belgiumsoccer.be/nieuws...t-zich-uit-over-de-kansen-van-krc-genk-speler Not the greatest of sources ... still it sounds like Martinez will consider Bailey ... also, love De Condé's closing comment "... on est la meilleure vitrine de Belgique" ... probably my mind has been in the gutter too long, but it made me smile ... as a vitrine doesn't make me think of football ... can't wait for fights to break out over who has the better vitrine. Good read, good blog ... http://inbedwithmaradona.com/100-2016/2016/11/28/leon-bailey
Witsel... went to Russian competition back in the days away from Benfica for the money, then wants to play for a big team again, only to go for the big bucks in the Chinese Super League...
One and a half year in China (before the World Cup) ... SMH ... sure the Russian league isn't a high standard either ... still it looked like he was finally going to put himself to the test ... silver lining ... improves our chances to see Nainggolan - Dembele controlling the midfield ... but yea, you never know ... despite playing in Russia he usually got into our starting line-up (a squaddie now?)
"What could have been" doesn't apply to Witsel any longer ... it's more apt to say that he left Belgium to play for the club(s) of his DR€AM$ ... as Benfica wasn't even a blip on the radar in his career, he clearly had other desires than being the best he can be ... spending his prime years counting Rubles and Yuans, it's now hard to defend that he was "locked in a gilded cage" ... at least Zenit are somewhat relevant in Europe but now my "kar = compleet gekeerd", i.e. I'm pulling/completing a one-eighty ... ffs he's moving to China as a 28yo ... SMH ... hopefully Bob phases him out ... at best a squaddie and we should prioritize whoever we'll ease into our first team for the future ... Tielemans would be the top candidate and ideally this opportunity helps him to develop faster/to launch his career ... the ultra-modern midfield general ... instead of Witsel's 100% of side and back-passes completed ... slowing down the tempo or having hardly any impact ... his dad's as well as the coach's pet. ATM I like a 3-4-3 diamond in soft games/when throwing caution in the wind ... with Nainggolan or Dembele at the base of the diamond and KDB feeding Hazard, Mertens and Lukaku up front (we have plenty of options to tailor our attack though) ... gradually bringing Tielemans more and more in these games. Against top sides I'd go with Nainggolan - Dembele controlling the midfield ... when we're ahead and you need to see out the game, you could still sub Witsel in (bezigheidstherapie/holding our dicks like in the good ol' Wilmots days) ... when shit happens you could put Fellaini in for the frommelgoals or to play hoofball (not really elegant as a plan B yet opportunism can be effective) ... and at times Fellaini will be mismatched by the opponent in which case you could even start with him (although I'd like to see less of both our walking afros) ... better yet, when we're behind, we could play very direct in a 3-4-3 diamond, which should be second nature as most of our experience we'll gain playing weaker sides, either Alderweireld and Vertonghen spraying their passes or making use of our wingbacks to move the ball up quickly. Nothing against 4-3-3 / 4-2-3-1 / 4-1-4-1 / etc. ... could always be useful ... yet I would like us to focus mainly on a highly entertaining 3-4-3 (het systeem inslijpen). PS at least Witsel will go to a league that really values their country's talent ... oddly Witsel will end up helping others develop and help the league grow ... while he didn't help himself develop into the best he can be.
Witsel made a fairly logical choice all things considered. 20 million a year will mean he should never worry about money again (you could say the same about 5 million a year, but it's not unheard of for athletes to squander those amounts by the time they reach their 50s or 60s). He may still be called up to the squad actually and initially he might start, but his game will probably stagnate or decline quickly and soon putting him ahead of Dembele or Nainggolan will be hard to justify. In terms of the Chinese league, I'm not too familiar with it, but it seems to give off the same feeling as the old NASL bubble, only more politically driven. If Jinping leaves office and investors lose interest, I imagine it could go south pretty quickly. IMO the MLS model is the way forward for most new leagues, with incremental steps, relatively small salaries and hard caps and appropriately sized stadiums. That sort of modest progress may not jive with their vision of Chinese football however.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_UEFA_European_Under-21_Championship_qualification#Group_6 Tielemans, Musonda Jr., Bakkali, Miangue, Dimata, Schrijvers, Bossaerts, Cools, ... to be joined by some of these kiddies: Faes, O.Mangala, Leya Iseka, Svilar/Jackers, Horemans, Vancamp, Verreth, Vanzeir, Lemoine, Touba, Mbenza, Heynen, Rigo, Azzaoui, Ademoglu, ... Plenty of attacking options, need more in defense ... more promising kiddies coming up behind this batch ... for now, something like: Svilar Cools---Faes/Horemans---Bossaerts/Lemoine---Miangue Musonda Jr./Ademoglu---Tielemans---Rigo/O.Mangala Verreth/Mbenza---Dimata---Bakkali
Bob Browaeys always underlined that it is more important to help promising kiddies unlock their potential than to win youth tournaments (don't mean much if you don't develop the players to win silverware at senior level) ... however, with the amount of talent already in the senior squad, it has become harder to get a look in and it's about time that our youth teams perform better ... to give the kiddies more of a taste before they can fight for a spot on the senior team. Our U-21 (from my previous post) ... kiddies born on or after 1 January 1996 ... need to qualify for the 2019 UEFA European Under-21 Championship ... with the top teams qualifying for the 2020 Olympics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_UEFA_European_Under-21_Championship_qualification#Group_6 Our U-19 ... kiddies born on or after 1 January 1999 ... need to qualify for the 2018 UEFA European Under-19 Championship ... with the top teams qualifying for the 2019 FIFA U-20 World Cup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_UEFA_European_Under-19_Championship_qualification#Group_5 Look out for ... Verlinden (Stoke) and Svilar (Anderlecht) could very well play for the U-21s instead, Antonucci (Monaco), Bongiovanni (Monaco), Delcroix (Anderlecht), Indy Boonen (MUFC), Moutha-Sebtaoui (MUFC), Emmers (Inter), Vanheusden (Inter), et al. Our U-17 ... kiddies born on or after 1 January 2000 ... were drawn into the elite round group 5 (with Holland, Belarus and Italy) ... need to qualify for the 2017 UEFA European Under-17 Championship ... with the top 5 teams qualifying for the the 2017 FIFA U-17 World Cup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_UEFA_European_Under-17_Championship_qualification#Group_5_2 Look out for ... De Bie (Spurs), Albanese (Hoffenheim), Lutonda (Anderlecht), Mayanga (Anderlecht), Openda (Brugge), Bertaccini (Genk), Van Den Eynden (Inter), et al. Winning 3rd place at the 2015 FIFA U-17 World Cup (SFs in 2015 and QFs in 2016 at the UEFA EC) was a good start ... now the kiddies need to kick on.
Our U-21 have just won the first match (report) ... next tie is at home against Turkey on 4 Sept. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_UEFA_European_Under-21_Championship_qualification_Group_6 Our U-19, the very promising kiddies that did well at Chile2015, will play Ireland tomorrow and should qualify for the 2017 UEFA European Under-19 Championship (taking place in July) and from 8 Nov. onwards the kiddies born on or after 1 January 1999 need to qualify for the 2018 UEFA European Under-19 Championship Our U-17 failed to qualify for the 2017 UEFA European Under-17 Championship ... now those born on or after 1 January 2001 need to qualify for the 2018 UEFA European Under-17 Championship from 26 Oct. onwards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_UEFA_European_Under-17_Championship_qualification#Group_1
http://www.football-italia.net/108801/nainggolan-i-quit-belgium http://www.nieuwsblad.be/cnt/dmf20170825_03036051 http://www.nieuwsblad.be/cnt/dmf20170825_03034942 http://sporza.be/cm/sporza/voetbal/Rode_Duivels/1.3054286 Nainggolan quits. This sounds definite, decided, looks like he'll never get to go to the World Cup. One of our best players. FML!
Relief ... yesterday there were murmurings in the media that he'd retire which were quickly dismissed ... then that Nieuwsbad interview from my previous post was published ... and now Radja's tweet. A world class player like him, a monster grinta personified, with his passion, his workrate, ... the kind of warrior we desperately need ... because backbones are in short supply in our team ... to leave him out of our Russia2018 squad is unfathomable ... especially when the ultimate mercenary, a backpassing coward that plays in china, gets into the starting line-up. Als er iets OFFICIEEL gezegd zal worden zul je het wel van mij horen... ben enkel teleurgesteld. Ik heb helemaal niets beslist.— Radja Nainggolan (@OfficialRadja) August 26, 2017