For those of you who don’t peruse the Yanks Abroad board, there is a thread there about a German-born GK who has agreed on a deal with Blackburn. According to the articles on that thread, his name is David Yelldell. He is slated to compete with Irish international Alan Kelly to back-up Friedel. He has been with Stuttgart Kickers in Germany and was loaned out to their reserve team this past year. He is 21.(I don’t have an exact DOB) He has an American father but lived in Germany all his life. He is 6-foot-4. He wants to play internationally for the U.S. Here are some links – Soccernet.com http://soccernet.espn.go.com/headlinenews?id=269458&cc=5901 Newspaper in Lancashire - http://www.thisislancashire.co.uk/lancashire/rovers/sport/ROVERS0.html The BigSoccer Yanks Abroad thread. - https://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=54060 My thought, which I expressed on the YA thread is that Mooch should inquire about this guy. He should get a scouting report from Friedel – assuming B’burn don’t sell him to Arsenal – and if Big Brad says the kid is legit, he should call him in. Of course if Fridel says the kid isn’t worth it, well, never mind. I love DJ Countess and I am a big Doug Warren fan but depth is very important and if Warren isn’t playing there needs to be someone to really push DJ to be No. 1 – not to mention to push Warren at No. 2 - and I think a kid on a PL roster is just the ticket. And, given that both Countess and Warren are kind of smallish (6-0, 6-1) for top level GKs, it would be nice to have a big one in the pool.
Is there any actual evidence that he wants to play for the US, other than "the player harbours ambitions of following in Friedel's footsteps and playing for the US national team one day", which as far as we know springs entirely from the imagination of the writer? Not that he would be likely to turn down a call-up.
Re: Re: New U23 GK? None that we know of. I mean, hell, a few hours ago I'd never heard of him nor knew he was age-eligible for Sydney and for US ciitzenship so the fact that I know as much as I do is in its own way kind of amazing.
I didn't mean to discount the value of your knowledge...just trying to separate fact from speculation. His birthdate is apparently October 1, 1981: http://www.kickers-stuttgart.de/spieler.htm#yelldell
I don't know, Goalkeeper is the wrong position to try and Tom Dooley your way into the USA squad. When ManU is looking seriously at your third stringer, there's obviously a fair amount of competition for the spots. With Kahn not getting any younger, he might have a better shot with Germany. Now if he could play on the right wing or right back, we could talk.