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UEFA Article on Jonathan de Guzman


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There are negatives to joining the best international team you can (all of Hargreaves dreams of playing in the EPL have been ruined so far thanks to all the extra $ value he got for being an England player).

I have no clue what he would choose but I don't think you can really call it, it's probably closer to 50/50 then 0% or 100% chance of joining us.

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quote:Originally posted by Juby

There are negatives to joining the best international team you can (all of Hargreaves dreams of playing in the EPL have been ruined so far thanks to all the extra $ value he got for being an England player).

I have no clue what he would choose but I don't think you can really call it, it's probably closer to 50/50 then 0% or 100% chance of joining us.

As much as I disagree with Hargreaves decision and agree that there are risks to joining a top international program, Hargreaves playing for England has been 100% positive for him career wise and boosted his chances enormously of playing in EPL. Before he played for England he was a decent but rather anonymous player on a top team. His two World Cup appearances boosted his international stature immensly and created a demand for him from english clubs where there was previously no demand. The reasons he has not transferred so far are not his national team duty but rather 1) he signed a long contract extension with Bayern a couple of years ago possibly an error on his part but I am sure they must have made him a good offer 2) Bayern is a top club, very well run especially in financial matters and consider themselves to be a buying not a selling team. They will drive the price up of any player they are selling as much as possible and will not sell unless they are ripping the buying team off. They also do not sell players at the player's wish as a matter of principal and as part of their strategy of only selling players for top dollar so it doesn't matter how much Hargreaves says he wants to play in England, Bayern will make him play out his contract even if he is sitting on the bench unless someone makes them an offer they can't refuse. 3) Everytime there is significant interest in Hargreaves from an English club he seems to suffer a serious injury.

Hargreaves lost his honour in my opinion by choosing England but noone can argue he didn't gain fame and fortune. Choosing England could have gone sour for Hargreaves but it didn't. DeGuzman seems to have much more talent than even Hargreaves so I don't think there would be many drawbacks to him choosing Holland unless he doesn't keep progressing as he has been doing so far. On the other hand the upside of choosing Holland may not be as great as choosing England was for Hargreaves. He is already playing at the highest level he can club wise in Holland and if he excels at Feyernoord he will attract attention from major teams in other leagues regardless of which national team he is playing for. He is also a much different type of player than Hargreaves. Hargreaves is like many of the other Canadians playing at top level a role player. He can be very effective when paired with the right teammates and the right tactics but is not really a star player and thus the exposure of playing very well for England in this role did a lot for his career. DeGuzman is a star type player and will stand out a lot more on his own. The main benefit of playing for Holland for him would be the opportunity to play on one of the world's best teams and increased possibility of playing in the World Cup. The risk would be that if he doesn't continue to be a star player he would not be selected any longer. Canada still has some things to offer so there is hope: the honour of playing for your real country, playing with his brother, a bit more freedom in that the coach might let him miss some games due to club commitments and a legacy of being a unique, important star player for Canada as opposed to just one in a line of great Dutch players. I for one am still hopeful that he may choose us though it is probably 50-50 at best. Getting a top coach and showing that the program is going to be run more seriously in the future might improve our chances.

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Dutch national coach Marco van Basten is another fan, though he rued: "We certainly have been thinking about him [for the national team], but unfortunately he is Canadian."

funny for a coach to make a statement like that, knowing full well jonathan in uncapped and possibly applying for a passport.

- maybe this means that they wont take him onto the dutch national team ever no matter what, maybe the dutch see being dutch as much more than just holding a passport.

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The best hope is persuasion from Julian to join him on the field representing Canada. I think Jonathan will be out of Holland within the year, 2 at most, probably with a club that would shock the poop out of most Canadian soccer fans. He will be getting his Dutch passport soon, but I suspect that will be more for roster issues (he is a more attractive option to European clubs when he has a European passport) than national team desires.

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quote:Originally posted by Grizzly

As much as I disagree with Hargreaves decision and agree that there are risks to joining a top international program, Hargreaves playing for England has been 100% positive for him career wise and boosted his chances enormously of playing in EPL. Before he played for England he was a decent but rather anonymous player on a top team. His two World Cup appearances boosted his international stature immensly and created a demand for him from english clubs where there was previously no demand. The reasons he has not transferred so far are not his national team duty but rather 1) he signed a long contract extension with Bayern a couple of years ago possibly an error on his part but I am sure they must have made him a good offer 2) Bayern is a top club, very well run especially in financial matters and consider themselves to be a buying not a selling team. They will drive the price up of any player they are selling as much as possible and will not sell unless they are ripping the buying team off. They also do not sell players at the player's wish as a matter of principal and as part of their strategy of only selling players for top dollar so it doesn't matter how much Hargreaves says he wants to play in England, Bayern will make him play out his contract even if he is sitting on the bench unless someone makes them an offer they can't refuse. 3) Everytime there is significant interest in Hargreaves from an English club he seems to suffer a serious injury.

Hargreaves lost his honour in my opinion by choosing England but noone can argue he didn't gain fame and fortune. Choosing England could have gone sour for Hargreaves but it didn't. DeGuzman seems to have much more talent than even Hargreaves so I don't think there would be many drawbacks to him choosing Holland unless he doesn't keep progressing as he has been doing so far. On the other hand the upside of choosing Holland may not be as great as choosing England was for Hargreaves. He is already playing at the highest level he can club wise in Holland and if he excels at Feyernoord he will attract attention from major teams in other leagues regardless of which national team he is playing for. He is also a much different type of player than Hargreaves. Hargreaves is like many of the other Canadians playing at top level a role player. He can be very effective when paired with the right teammates and the right tactics but is not really a star player and thus the exposure of playing very well for England in this role did a lot for his career. DeGuzman is a star type player and will stand out a lot more on his own. The main benefit of playing for Holland for him would be the opportunity to play on one of the world's best teams and increased possibility of playing in the World Cup. The risk would be that if he doesn't continue to be a star player he would not be selected any longer. Canada still has some things to offer so there is hope: the honour of playing for your real country, playing with his brother, a bit more freedom in that the coach might let him miss some games due to club commitments and a legacy of being a unique, important star player for Canada as opposed to just one in a line of great Dutch players. I for one am still hopeful that he may choose us though it is probably 50-50 at best. Getting a top coach and showing that the program is going to be run more seriously in the future might improve our chances.

not trying to be bickersome but he wasn't that anonymous as a Bayern player and if he had joined Canada I'd bet dollars to donuts he'd have gotten his limey way and be in EPL. I don't think Bayern would have made it so impossible to buy a 'Canadian international' of the same ability as they would an Englander, thus killing what I thought was his (albeit I'll admit somewhat fickle) ambition at the EPL.

Besides that, this could be a debatable point, but being the star player on a weaker team might have created more praise for him as a regular MOTM. As we know Hargreaves has been the butt the english media's rebuking of their team at certain times, although thanks to this lastest world cup with england he's in good graces agian.

I'd agree jono's probably gonna be better but I think your not giving hargreaves the credit he deserves, if he moved to a non all star team He could easily be the best player on the team and a bonifide star no matter what game he plays. in like video games terms I'd say jono may hit the 90's outta 100 someday but hargreaves is still like an 88 and the roof is low when your that high.

It's disgusting that we have to worry about these traitors though, the World cup is supposed to be THE INSTITUTION in Fifa that is FREE from Monetary concern. The purpose of the tournement is to win it for your country, and if hargreaves ever won it with england, for his part it would have nothing to do with england and everything to do with him. Not only did he piss on his people, he pissed all over the biggest event in the world.

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Bayern makes decisions on re-signing or selling players based entirely on his worth to the team not what national team he is playing for. Bayern is an extremely well run team that evaluates talent and skill accurately and does not pay for a player because he has played with a certain national or club team. This is one of the reasons they can compete on even terms with the much richer big European clubs. Any player who is a starter for Bayern has some prominence but of the starters he was one of the ones that one heard very little about from the German press something which I am well qualified to comment on because I lived in Germany for most of the time he was playing there. He was far, far less prominent in England which is one of the reasons the fans protested his World Cup callup. I imagine anyone who was a starter with Bayern could probably get a trial with a mid-table EPL team if he was out of contract but that is a far cry from being coveted by top teams willing to pay top dollar. His England experience does raise his transfer/salary price but what it raised even more in England is it created a demand for English teams to sign him where previously there was little and this is what increases his chances of going to England dramatically.

Again the thing preventing Hargreaves transferring is his contract extension which he signed a couple of years ago even though there was some interest in him from England. If he really dreamed of playing in England he would not have signed this extension. What Hargreaves wants is to play for as high a level team as possible with the most chance of success, the highest salary and the highest level of fame. This is how he chose his national team and how he chooses his club team, ie. he is a mercenary not someone playing from the heart. The comments about dreaming about playing in England are similar to the comments he made that he was going to play for Canada, ie. good public relations in regards to what he sees as his best interests at the time but subject to change if a better offer comes along. What Hargreaves really wants is an upgrade on Bayern in terms of fame and fortune and at the time he signed the extension he knew he could go to England and sign with a lesser team than Bayern like say Bolton the team his father supports. Had he wanted to play for a midtable EPL team he would not have signed a contract extension with Bayern and would be in the EPL right now. The recent bitching about wanting to play in England started when the big boys took an interest in him especially ManU. Incidentally he is considered in as much regard by the Bayern fans now as he is by us, ie. traitor is often a word used to describe him on Bayern fansites.

I am not denigrating Hargreaves talents at all. He has been a consistent solid starter for Bayern for several years. Yet he has not been one of their star players at all and in fact has lost his starting position several times. During the years that Stalteri and Julian DeGuzman were playing in the Bundesliga they both probably slightly outperformed him. Yet I doubt either DeGuzman or Stalteri are capable of playing the way Hargreaves did in the World Cup even if they were in the England squad. This is why I think he can be a very effective player but needs the right teammates and tactical formation. To think he would be a star on a lesser team is to ignore the type of player he is. Hargreaves is a high level role player and a solid defensive midfielder with decent but not exceptional offensive skills. There is no doubt that had he played for us he would have been a sure starter and one of our best players but he also would have been an upgrade on a type of player we already have (though he would be a pretty big upgrade to the B-team squad that Yallop called to WCQ). Whether this would have been enough to make a difference for us is debateable but he is not the type of player we are lacking to turn us into a CONCACAF powerhouse. What we are lacking are a creative, playmaking midfielder and a natural goalscoring. Jonathon DeGuzman is showing signs of possibly having both skills which is why he could really be an important player for Canada. Hutchinson may also have some of these qualities but probably not to the same degree as DeGuzman. DeRo is this type of player at MLS level but unfortunately not at international level.

Now to show that we can agree on something I do agree with your last paragraph and hopefully Jonothon will make the right decision about who to play for.

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And you can say all this for bayern because you are the GM? your arguements are a bunch of heresay said with an air of authority, lol, are you going to write small essays on everything I say? honestly, the more you try and make it look like I'm always wrong, the less it says about your opinions. Sometimes you should just say your opinion without trying to make it in a format directly opposed to mine. Make your own comments instead harassing me with rebuttles that are really no more valueable an opinion then mine.

PS: the nature of the sport, with so many major leagues, makes EVERYTHING completely relative, you change any players team at either the club or national level and it would completely change their career. I think it's silly to think playing for Canada wouldn't have drastically changed his career.

And from what I understand, hargreaves settles in for like a year and a half with bayern, then gets his panties in a bunch for a few months, then gets comfy (signs extension), then starts whining. Like I said, he's a fickle bastard, but he definatley(although maybe only at times) has had major ambitions for england, just to get thwarted, and then he settles in. I can probably list off 20 major players that signed major contract extensions and within a year or so started doing everything they could to leave. I think it's mistaken to assume he always makes the most logical or the best choices.

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I can say all this about Bayern because I lived in Germany for 10 years and followed them and the Bundesliga quite closely. Bayern has a very distinctive and effective way of operating and have had a very stable team management over the years. I actually strongly dislike Bayern (one of my favourite teams is 1860) yet the way the team is run is quite fascinating and obviously successful. It is quite obvious to anyone who follows German soccer that you know very little about the subject. I have no problem with people holding different opinions to mine as long as they are opinions based on knowledge not ignorance. Ed, for example, has an excellent knowledge of German soccer even though we disagree strongly on a number of subjects in particular on Hargreaves. I can respect his opinions even if I don't always agree with them because unlike you he knows what he is talking about. Jefferey S. is another poster who I often strongly disagree with but will still admit he has a very deep knowledge of soccer. You are just a blowhard, posting inaccurate information about subjects you know nothing or only very little about. How many Bundesliga games have you attended by the way? I will make a note to self in the future to ignore the crap you are posting. Considering you claim to be in university you may also want to consider taking a writing course so you can write in proper English and maybe also one in reading comprehension so you can actually understand what those who are writing legibly in the language are actually saying.

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Since this thread is turning into more of Hargreaves thread I will post this article from earlier this week here. Typical Hoeness comment, we are not going to sell but leaving a window of hope to drive the price up and to encourage other teams to make bids so Bayern can see how much they are willing to overpay for him. If someone puts enough money on the table he will be in EPL by January. The Milan comment is very funny, he is not demanding to play there because neither AC or Inter is putting in bids for him. It is completly obvious that the only teams willing to overpay for Hargreaves are EPL teams because he plays for the England national team. If he played for Canada they wouldn't be interested just like the Italian teams are not interested. You have to love his last statement, real class.

Hargreaves: I want to play in England

LONDON (CP) - Calgary-born midfielder Owen Hargreaves has reiterated his desire to play in England.

Bayern Munich refused to sell Hargreaves to Manchester United in the summer. But according to the BBC, the German team may be softening its thoughts on selling him. "If ever we found a replacement for Owen, who cost less than we'd get for him, we might think about it," Bayern GM Uli Hoeness was quoted on the BBC website.

The transfer window reopens on Jan. 1, with Hargreaves back in training after recovering from a broken leg.

Thanks to his father's bloodlines, Hargreaves plays internationally for England and says he wants to play in the country he represents.

"It's not like I'm saying I want to go to AC Milan or Inter Milan because they're offering me more money," Hargreaves was quoted by the BBC. "It's because it's England and because Britain is where my family is. My parents and my brothers are in Canada but the whole of my dad's side of the family is in Bolton and my mum's side is in Rhyl (Wales).

"I think some people don't realize that. They think I'm half-German or something but I'm not. I was brought up by a British family. It just happened to be in Canada."

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"I think some people don't realize that. They think I'm half-German or something but I'm not. I was brought up by a British family. It just happened to be in Canada."

Like it or not, that's the first time he's said anything that makes any sense.

Kinda sounds like what's been written here on an occasion or two no?

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usually I find it's the people who lack points that start pointing out typos and what not. This is an internet forum, not a political science essay. How many people living in Germany can be said to be correctly privy on Bayerns business practise would be like 400. After that it's you assuming your right cause your you and I'm me. It's rather childesh actually.

And you don't have to ignore my posts, you just seem to compelled to oppose me at every turn cause I doubt yer wisdom sometimes.

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I'm with Grizzly on this, Hargreaves is not in the EPL because he is under contract with Bayern and they are not going to sell him unless they can commit robbery. Hoeness has said Bayern are not in the business of selling their top players, they will sell Hargreaves when they're ready to and they will make a killing. Then they'll turn around and use a fraction of the money to replace him with an equal or better player. Also, a German poster on BS noted that Bayern would have to pay taxes on the transfer income so it's not really in their interest to be selling players if they don't have to.

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