"Thome", was listed as the sub at holding mid for Brad Ring versus Swansea tonight. Does anyone out there know anything about him? He looked a little skittish and not too comfortable in his brief time out there, although he did play a beautiful ball out to the right wing late in the match.
so is this your best guess, or do you know that this is who took the field for us Tuesday night? according to his listed October DOB, he would be only 16 at this point.....the wikipedia page also says he plays at the Aspire Academy, which I believe is a Qatar-based academy that mines talent from all over Africa, and then enters their youth teams in all sorts of major tournaments, with a fair amount of success....if there is a 16 year-old Ivorian who captains his country's U17 side, and he wants to continue to develop here, then I am all in favor of that!!!
I didn't go to the game so don't know what the guy looks like, but Thome isn't that unusual. I found a young midfielder practically next door in Indiana: http://www.ccsj.edu/athletics/profiles/msoccer/2011/rthome.html Then there's this Thome. Maybe a little on the old side for us, but hey: http://bestuff.com/stuff/emerson-thome If Tuesday's player looked exactly like the guy from Cote d'Ivoire, then maybe I'm 100% wrong, but seems as though bringing a minor from Africa to play pro soccer in San Jose is a situation so fraught with challenges that J&F would have to be pretty sure he was The One to make the effort.
Yeah that seriously has got to be him. I'm pretty surprised he's that young, hopefully we keep him around and he becomes the future at CDM.
Well this pic would seem to show that they LOOK alike (sorry can't post it, it's a copyright image): http://isiphotos.photoshelter.com/g...kFRwon4o3U/I0000tYSUCjyiAUY/C0000ph.duJk_gNk/ It would seem the Quakes have a 17 year old wunderkid from Cote D'Ivoire...
I asked Robert Jonas, and he confirmed, he's the kid from the Ivory Coast, and he's here with someone else: https://twitter.com/robertjonas/status/231150221743247360
This is what first came to mind. Not going to get excited over a 16 or 17 year old player. I believe that he has to be 18 yr olds to sign a professional contract per FIFA.
Well, he appears to be a lefty that likes to hit a long diagonal switch ball(ala Corrales). Seems more defensive than offensive.
Thing is he's a completely different player than Jasseh, and he's captain. Hope the Quakes keep him and develop him, I'm drooling thinking about that long ball switch going to the likes of Salinas, Chavez, Garza, Beita et cetera.
i may be alone on this but i'd like to still have jasseh on the team. he's obviously crazy fast, young, cheap and great depth on the wing after chavez/salinas/garza. my guess is the release had more to do with not getting along with fy than anything else. by the way he's in the 3rd division in norway or something like that. maybe we can get him back for the cost of a plane ticket
I wouldn't mind if Jasseh were still on the team. I think he'd fit our system. According to his Wikipedia page he left to get more playing time:
The few times I remember seeing him I thought he looked pretty good and was a little surprised when he was released. He seemed very similar to Garza in both size and speed (maybe faster than Garza). But international spots are important if only so that they can be used to lure current MLS players over. I'm glad that the Quakes seem to be focusing quite a bit youth development, though. It's important to get players while they're unproven and inexpensive.
Jasseh may have asked to be released, but the team probably would have released him anyway after the year. In the month or two before his release, he was playing with the Academy team and didn't even look good against that competition. I saw one of the games, and a friend of mine saw a couple others. The story also was that he was uncoachable - didn't listen to Yallop or the other coaches, didn't listen to the other players, just wanted to do his thing. He didn't want to play defense, wasn't good at passing, and pretty much just wanted to dribble and take guys on. Maybe a year or two fighting in the lower leagues somewhere will wake him up and he'll learn that he has to work at things and listen to coaches, and he'll improve.
Based on a tweet today from Guvenisik, looks like the Quakes are trialing Thomas Hitzlsperger. Here's his wiki page . Quite the resume, only 30 years old so not over the hill yet.
Kind of have a memory of seeing him play for West Ham, at least I remember some German player that had a pretty hard shot.
A central midfielder? That's an interesting choice. Also, his most recent contract was terminated after just the first year. Not that that means anything necessarily, but it is interesting. Probably wouldn't come cheap. I wonder if the Quakes have some more in-league trades up their sleeves if they are serious about signing this guy.