Enes Sali

[VinceA]

We can't get them all, and ultimately Romania was willing to give him a lot more than we probably were.

[gator]

Once we qualify for Qatar I think some of these dual nationals will get on board with our program, suddenly we will look like a more attractive option with 2 guaranteed World Cups to participate in which is a goal of most players! I hate losing a player like this but I honestly haven't seen one minute of his play and others have said there will be players emerging who we haven't even talked about yet!

[sandman]

This sucks, however i have no issue with it.

He has not taken a cent of CSA money. 

[Kent]

2 hours ago, Obinna said:

I think you're right here, but that's why I brought up the NTC. It is more of a training environment, whereas the provincial teams are geared towards winning medals at the national championship, which players ultimately get scouted from.

He could have theoretically by-passed the whole provincial team set up, considering what his ceiling is, and trained directly with other national team prospects from Ontario at NTC, without the realities of his age affecting things. 

Ah well, it's all moot now anyways. 

Can you enlighten me more on the NTC? You have to be scouted to go to it? How young do they go? How many players are involved? Because this is all sounds like a stretch that he gets involved at 10 years old, then leaves the country and 5 years later turns down a call up to the Romanian senior team because he has a buddy that he played/trained with 5 years ago is eligible for Canada (and odds would be against his buddy ever being good enough for Canada, since 99.9% of 10 year old prospects won't be good enough).

If it's not obvious, I legit know nothing about the NTC.

[Obinna]

1 hour ago, Kent said:

Can you enlighten me more on the NTC? You have to be scouted to go to it? How young do they go? How many players are involved? Because this is all sounds like a stretch that he gets involved at 10 years old, then leaves the country and 5 years later turns down a call up to the Romanian senior team because he has a buddy that he played/trained with 5 years ago is eligible for Canada (and odds would be against his buddy ever being good enough for Canada, since 99.9% of 10 year old prospects won't be good enough).

If it's not obvious, I legit know nothing about the NTC.

You need an invite to go. You can't just try out or pay money to attend, you must get scouted.

Typically the scouting occurs during the summer National All Star championships (provincial team comp) and fall Club championships (comp between club reps from each province), because it is/was the best way to bring all of the best players across Canada to a single location. It just makes logistical sense for scouting to occur here, not just for the CSA, but also for University coaches. The National All Star championships were U-15 and U-17, while the Club championships were U-14, U-16 and U-18, but a while back I think they changed the All Star comp to U-14 and U-16 as well. 

If selected, you attend the NTC over the winter, in an indoor facility, and they are monthly camps that occur over a 4-5 day period with CSA coaches. You get 4 or 5 of these per season, basically. The camp sizes were roughly 28-30 players from various age groups (like I mentioned before) and just because you attend once doesn't guarantee you are at the next one, so players are dropped and added with each camp, although the best players obviously end up being mainstays.

There are/were 5 NTCs in Canada: Pacific (Vancouver) Prairies (Edmonton), Ontario (Toronto), Quebec (Montreal), and Atlantic (Halifax). Obviously if you never lived in these areas you had to find travel arrangements (don't know if they were subsidized or not).

If you aren't scouted you can get there with a personal recommendations and I know of a few players who also got invites in that backdoor way. That would probably be the way a phenom 10-year old could find himself there, under the guidance of CSA coaches.

Again, it is just training, so if you can keep up there really is no reason why you couldn't train with players who are 4, 5 or 6 years older.

In theory the CSA would have tabs on him if he were in the NTC program from an early age, but honestly if you are that good at 11 going to the Barca academy why go play/train at the NTC in the winter? Your sights are clearly set on bigger things, especially with people like Hagi sniffing around.....

Edit: I was never suggesting playing at the NTC would have kept him around, but it would/could have signaled to us that Canada Soccer is serious about the kid. It would have at least been something. For all we know though he was recommended and declined, because he is just that good. Several of our NT players have gone through NTC, but some of our best ones like Davies and David bypassed it entirely, as far as I know. Obviously they weren't at NTC at 10 years old either, so my point about NTC was probably moot from the beginning, now that I think about...

Edit #2: After a quick search it seems the NTC program has been replaced with newer models, such as the Ontario Regional Excel Super Centre, so it appears I was living in the past on the whole NTC thing. No wonder you don't know much about it

Edited November 3, 2021 by Obinna

[Sal333]

3 hours ago, El Hombre said:

So it was exactly as I figured.  Might be worth providing context to what was said rather than say that Canada "rejected" Ayo: Yes, he wasn't selected even though other players from his team were (no mention of what position they played which is an important point) but there were a couple other players that Canada was looking at at the time of that U15 camp: Jonathan David and Alphonso Davies (who was considered a forward at the time).  They were also pursuing a Jordan Perruzza who is a year younger and in 2014 was catching the eye of Empoli. 

Sometimes players work out, other times they don't.  But you'll never be able to catch them all.  Again, it's all about the net effect and right now Canada has a net positive.

Speaking of context, it wasn't one camp. It was multiple camps. And the last time I looked squads have more than one or two forwards. Usually four is the standard.

[El Hombre]

4 minutes ago, Sal333 said:

Speaking of context, it wasn't one camp. It was multiple camps. And the last time I looked squads have more than one or two forwards. Usually four is the standard.

The guy in the TSN special mentioned two camps, one specifically where someone else from his team was selected.

Your point was that he was "rejected" with no mention of who might've got his place.  If you look at some of the other names that were bandied around for that age group at that time (Champions League goal scorer, Bundesliga champion etc.), there are some pretty highly touted players on that list that he was competing with.

Bringing up some perceived slight years ago is always a convenient cop-out for players to deflect responsibility.  If it wasn't getting selected for a youth camp, it would be not getting selected for a youth team or tournament or not playing enough in a youth competition or not making a gold cup provisional roster or any number of other gripes that help paint them as a victim when they have just as much responsibility as the national association for a decision that they made.

[red card]

5 hours ago, Sal333 said:

Romania is 41 on the FIFA rankings. They have a decent chance of qualifying for 2022 WC.

Germany has already qualified from Romania's group. 2 matches left with Romania facing Iceland and a easy one vs Lichtenstein. Armenia & North Macedonia are just 1 point behind but face each other. 

If they finish second, they'll advance to the next round. Based on Romania's current record, they won't be a seeded team. Looking at the pool of possible 10 second place finishers, Romania is only ranked higher than Scotland by 1 place. They should be ranked higher than the 2 Nations League entrants. But only 3 spots left, so you wouldn't bet on Romania making the World Cup. 

3 qualifiers will most likely come from the 2nd place finishers of Serbia/Portugal, Sweden/Spain, Italy/Switzerland, Czech/Wales, Norway/Turkey, Russia/Croatia & Poland/Albania.

Edited November 3, 2021 by red card

[toontownman]

Goodnight sweet prince..

.. my childlike brain somehow always gets him confused with Richie Ennin, so it is a win for me. It just two frickin letters brain, EN, EN!

[Obinna]

10 minutes ago, toontownman said:

Goodnight sweet prince..

.. my childlike brain somehow always gets him confused with Richie Ennin, so it is a win for me. It just two frickin letters brain, EN, EN!

You're not alone lol

[Bertuzzi44]

Kid clearly has big potential. Very unfortunate to lose him, especially so early.

[Sal333]

1 hour ago, El Hombre said:

The guy in the TSN special mentioned two camps, one specifically where someone else from his team was selected.

Your point was that he was "rejected" with no mention of who might've got his place.  If you look at some of the other names that were bandied around for that age group at that time (Champions League goal scorer, Bundesliga champion etc.), there are some pretty highly touted players on that list that he was competing with.

Bringing up some perceived slight years ago is always a convenient cop-out for players to deflect responsibility.  If it wasn't getting selected for a youth camp, it would be not getting selected for a youth team or tournament or not playing enough in a youth competition or not making a gold cup provisional roster or any number of other gripes that help paint them as a victim when they have just as much responsibility as the national association for a decision that they made.

3 points.

1) I didn't know I had to specify which players he was going up against to make my story sound true to you. You accused my post of being specious not of being vague.

2) Seeing as David is the only other player you mentioned that made it to the national team, my point still stands about  Canadian scouting. 

3)The US program that is churning out three and four times the players we are was able to evaluate him properly. And took him in.

You accused my post of being misleading and wrong. I showed you a video that said as much. You changed your to objection to context. 

The fact remains that Akinola went to multiple camps and was not accepted in the national program. But apparently you had never heard of that.

[Canuckistan2019]

Romania won’t even make it to the next two World Cups lmaooo

[narduch]

1 minute ago, Canuckistan2019 said:

Romania won’t even make it to the next two World Cups lmaooo

Maybe FIFA will expand the World Cup to 64 teams by the time he's 25

[Canuckistan2019]

Just now, narduch said:

Maybe FIFA will expand the World Cup to 64 teams by the time he's 25

Maybe but still a team like Romania isn’t better than us. I would get if they more of higher tier European team like maybe Austria or even Denmark but Romania ?? Really? 😂

 

It’s clear as day the kid is getting forced to play for them and Romania are that desperate for their next “hagi” that they will even cap tie him at the age of 15 

[Free kick]

i came accross this article just now and thought immedately of this thread so i thought would post it:

https://www.gazzetta.it/Calcio/Campionati-Esteri/03-11-2021/romania-enes-sali-nazionale-maggiore-15-anni-4202210010994.shtml
 

But now i see its old news as there are two pages of posts already reporting this.  The headline refers to this player as “The new Hagi”.

Edited November 4, 2021 by Free kick

[Free kick]

7 hours ago, gator said:

Once we qualify for Qatar I think some of these dual nationals will get on board with our program, suddenly we will look like a more attractive option with 2 guaranteed World Cups to participate in which is a goal of most players! I hate losing a player like this but I honestly haven't seen one minute of his play and others have said there will be players emerging who we haven't even talked about yet!

In essence thats it right there.  I too hate commenting on players that i have never seen play.  Also, we still dont know what the quality of this kid will be like in 5-10 years.  There are a gazillion kids with promise, who dont develop.   They are rushing to cap him because they can see the concacaf WCQ standings and the fact that the WC will be in NA in 5 years. 

Bottom line,  if we qualify for Qatar and put in a better performance than we did in 1986,  then the defections of the past twenty years should be a thing of the past.  Sure, there will still be some, as there are everywhere,  but the int’l record of our MNT and its failures in WCQ over the past 30 years is the number one reason is my opinion why we lost them.  People want to play in the world cup,  and Canada was not viewed as the best avenue for achieving that.  

Edited November 4, 2021 by Free kick

[Filip]

13 hours ago, Dominic94 said:

I should elaborate,

What I mean is, in your last point. I do believe he should go with their youth set up 10000% as we have none and he needs to play and they can offer him exposure that we can’t.

However, to go and take a senior call up for the sole purpose of cap tying at 15 is selfish by advising by Hagi. I’m fairly certain that Enes could flip flop on NT’s and get some games in for both (U23 qualifying for Can) by playing the field. I’m not entirely convinced that Romania will be a better team than Canada in 5 years, and all due respect to them but we have Atleast 1 WC to offer and it’s likely we qualify next year. There’s some opportunities that he would miss out on, and again even in terms of exposure, Davies and David aren’t in their prime, Adidas and Nike will be competing for them for a decade. Finally, Canada’s best players are 21 and there is definitely another Davies/David prospect that will emerge shortly, wether we get Sali or not, there’s more like him coming I do believe  that, I’m not so sure the same can be said for Romania. In terms of winning and playing games and what he feels etc, I think Hagi just wants Romania to have a star player potentially, because I don’t think they’ll be better than us in 5 years and I do believe over the next 15 we could end up in the Copa America, Multiple WC and win a few gold cups. Not so sure about Romania winning anything or making anything.

I feel like the player would be losing out here.

As a Canadian-Romanian myself, I can offer my perspective here. Sali is a great dribbler and quite physically developed for his age, but he needs to learn to be less selfish on the ball and mature in his decision making in general. He’s definitely got time to do that and in a good place learning under Hagi, but this move is clearly to avoid a Corbeanu situation — although it’s a bit different too, since Sali plays in Romania not England, with his family choosing Hagi’s academy and I’m sure that played a part in his choice here

He probably should have just kept his options open until he’s at least 3-4 years older or playing at a high enough level, but… that’s that. Still a chance for Canada anyways with the new rule for U21 players, but at this point I doubt it. May not matter for either country in the end anyway, far too early to know..

As for the future, a lot of people doubted Canada before Davies & David became stars, and even now many people don’t think about Canada as a future team regardless of the promising programs and special talents coming up. In that way, I’d say it’s similar for Romania - underrated footballing nation that has had its worst decade ever recently (the 2010s) and still has some problems with corruption. But there’s been some major changes too — Romania actually have a lot of talents coming up due to Hagi’s work (one of the best academies in Eastern Europe), other academies in Romania have started new investments, and the U21 rule in the league for the last couple years. Mentality also seems better in most of these youngsters than in the recent past (last 15 years), where Romania had many technical players but poor mentality and physical problems (Mutu is just the biggest example, but you’d be surprised..)

There’s also a ton of young Romanians in Italy right now, 19yo Radu Dragusin who played for Juve a few times last season now on loan to Sampdoria is a promising talent. Cirjan at Arsenal, Morutan at Galatasaray, Hagi at Rangers, R Marin at Cagliari, Mihaila and Man at Parma, Munteanu at Fiorentina, etc

The national team has an inexperienced coach right now and still in transition with several players missing or with U21s (who did well in last two Euros)

But I would say the future definitely looks very promising for both Canada and Romania, regardless of what some fans might say

Enes Sali in the end is just one promising player, he’s only 15 and has a lot to learn, could end up like Freddy Adu or maybe he’ll turn out good. Far too early to say

Edited November 4, 2021 by Filip

[Filip]

4 hours ago, Canuckistan2019 said:

Romania won’t even make it to the next two World Cups lmaooo

Probably won’t make this one but there is a good young generation coming up

and there’s already a next Hagi, the son himself 😁 he’s got great vision and Gerrard praised him as well, scored a great goal against Germany after nutmegging Rudiger.

we’ll see anyway… both Canada and Romania should have bright futures, although Romania has more problems with corruption and stupidity, things are improving and there are a lot of promising players with better mentalities now

that said, Canada will probably start making the WC almost every time from now on, can’t see Canada outside of top 4 in Concacaf going forward

Edited November 4, 2021 by Filip

[Bertuzzi44]

4 hours ago, Canuckistan2019 said:

Romania won’t even make it to the next two World Cups lmaooo

Not sure we are in a position to laugh teams that are better than us, and historically have been waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better than us. Romania has qualified for seven (7) World Cups and 5 (five) European Championships. They are also currently ranked higher than us.

I really hate this mentality. Canada is definitely looking good, and I am sure a lot of us are optimistic, but must keep it up. I've said this before and I'll say it again, Canada hasn't won sh!t in over 20 years, and has only qualified for the World Cup ONCE (36 years ago). Canada has a lot to prove yet.

 

[The Real Marc]

I feel for this kid. This is a bad call-up on their part, a bad decision on his, but he's in a tough spot. He must be under immense direct and indirect pressure here ... Romanian parents, playing in Romania, at a club run by Popescu, coached by Hagi ... what's he gonna do? Deline and possibly tank his immediate club career?

[dyslexic nam]

I suspect he has lots of people that don’t have his best interest at heart whispering in his ear that he can be the next Hagi and lead Romania to new glory years.  For a 15 yr old who is receiving bad advice, that could be pretty tempting - especially when he is immersed in that environment.   No surprise that he is signing up for that kind of utopian dream.  

[Strait Red]

16 minutes ago, dyslexic nam said:

I suspect he has lots of people that don’t have his best interest at heart whispering in his ear that he can be the next Hagi and lead Romania to new glory years.  For a 15 yr old who is receiving bad advice, that could be pretty tempting - especially when he is immersed in that environment.   No surprise that he is signing up for that kind of utopian dream.  

Players at all ages get bad advice, look at Tomori. The England squad is announced today and he’s not in it. If he can’t make the squad vs. Albania and San Marino, he isn’t in their World Cup plans.

 

yeah I’m a bit bitter 😂 😂 

[Corazon]

51 minutes ago, Strait Red said:

Players at all ages get bad advice, look at Tomori. The England squad is announced today and he’s not in it. If he can’t make the squad vs. Albania and San Marino, he isn’t in their World Cup plans.

 

yeah I’m a bit bitter 😂 😂 

Beat me to it.  Tomori will get called back in to England but its quite clear the intentions of both his callups at this point.  Hard to leave Maguire off, he's been fantastic this past month 😂

I wish Tomori all the best but I hope a little doubt creeped into his mind when he didn't receive the call for these upcoming fixtures.  In my opinion that's 2 for 2 callups/caps that have to make you seriously question the intent of Southgate and his staff.  He is 3 or 4 years younger than the current batch of Center backs so I believe the intent is to keep him cap tied until the time comes when he is needed in the future.

As for Sali, this also smells of bad advice.  It's unfortunate but hopefully it is just to train with the senior squad as these are big upcoming fixtures for Romania.  At this time, he is not good enough to crack our squad but its the potential that has me uneasy.

[Bertuzzi44]

3 hours ago, Corazon said:

At this time, he is not good enough to crack our squad but its the potential that has me uneasy.

I'd rate Liga I over the dutch second tier........