Kobe Hernandez-Foster at HamKam (Norway)

This is just a general point and not aimed at anyone specific:

The job of an agent is to serve the needs of his client, not to be drunk on his own dogma and use his clients as vehicles to fulfill his own agenda

Good talk

 

What if you change “needs” to “wants” or “desires”?

does that change anyone’s judgement of things? I know Wolfsburg has been a cluster and I’m not defending the agent but if a player wants a certain outcome the agent should help make that happen right? Even if the player may be wrong. Tough call.

 

if you think kids said get me to wolfsburg then more power to you

 

Lol no not that. But they could been more than interested in get me to a German team like pulisic and McKennie.

 

That would have been preferable

 

*adds to meme collection*

 

@ussoccer97531 @David Kerr Like a year or two ago both of you had KHF in the top tier of prospects, what happened? Was his physicality and speed overestimated, or expected to increase significantly?

 

gonna guess its the latter. he looked like he almost belonged at 15 or 16, but seems now like he was already athletically the final package then

 

Yup, I (along with most of this forum I'd hazard a guess) only became familiar with KHF watching him play as a CB with the U-17s and based on how he looked there assumed he had decent athleticism, curious to hear what people who frequently watched him play mins at LB thought.

 

Decent athletism has been wild assumption even back then. His only chance was to move to DM and that's what Wolfsburg was trying. Still young and might chance at MLS eventually if doesn't go on a lower Euro leagues tour.

 

Looked through the archives (highlighted the parts about his athleticism)

https://chasingacup.com/a-breakdown-of-the-2002-age-group/

https://chasingacup.com/an-in-depth-look-at-the-fall-2020-top-50-u20-prospect-rankings/

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I thought he was a lot quicker than Wolfsburg did that’s for damn sure. His ability to move laterally was a lot worse than I thought at the time

 

Thank you for admitting, but that was so obvious.

 

Woof. Doesn't it seem like he'd have a better chance of getting scouted if he just came and tried to catch on in MLS?

 

If you're repped by Kleiban, better you end up at a much lower level, as long as it's not in MLS. The same thing happened with Llanez going to the Austrian 2 BL.

Gary's tanked these kid's careers, just because he had an axe to grind with the top domestic league. He's a sad individual. In fairness to him though, after he failed so hard, the clients should have dropped him. So it's part on them.

Same thing with Cuevas who recently hired Gary as his agent. It's like these players know nothing but they broadly want to go to Europe and that's Gary's sole ideology for them too. But they could just instruct an agent who's not incompetent.

 

that seems like a brutally low level for khf

 

Or...

I mean, the market is the market.

If that's where you end up, as a player on a free, odds are that's because there's not much interest in you at a higher level.

 

Didn't everyone think St. Polten is a brutally low level for Uly? Well, he's not even doing well there.

 

I forget who, but I was once accused of being a "first team minutes truther" because I considered it extremely important in evaluating players. It is.

This is a lesson people should have learned by now, they haven't, and they never will - you never know how good a player really is until they've played first team minutes. Sweeping judgments about players based on youth ball is guesswork.

Yes, you can look at youth ball and determine who should get a shot. But you can't make sweeping statements about the quality of a player until they've played first team minutes.

Trying going back to 2019 or 2020 and tell people John Tolkin is better than KHF, Travian Sousa, or Chris Gloster.

Or in the 2019 U-20 cycle that Brendan Aaronson was better than Mendez. Or that Dike, in college, would be better than Soto.

Or go to an earlier cycle and say the Cristian Roldan would be better than Gedion Zelalem.

I get hype. But you can only take it so far without first team minutes. Playing well at a first team level speaks so much more than anything at youth ball (and I love to follow youth ball too).

The weird thing for American fans is that players can live off of youth hype longer than they should.

 

For some american fans*. Specifically those that really only pay attention to youth prospects.

For prospects you put them all in the wait snd see bucket until like you said they do something at the senior level. Couldn’t agree more.

 

The big advantage of youth players for a lot of people is that they haven't had a chance to disappoint them yet

 

I don't understand why these kids don't want to try out their luck in MLS after seeing how many eyes from Europe MLS is getting and how many young talents are jumping from MLS to Europe too. Plus the bonus that MLS does play a lot of youth players. They'll eventually find out here that if you don't stand out in MLS you won't do it either in any top 7 Euro leagues.

 

🇳🇴 OBOS-ligaen

🧐🇺🇸 Kobe Hernández-Foster officially joins 🇺🇸 Sam Rogers at HamKam in Norway's 2nd tier https://t.co/FTvdUToSy5

— 🇺🇸 ⚽ east (@eastdeflection) November 4, 2021