Jul 30, 2015 08:55
league: major league soccer (mls),
club: fiorentina,
club: celtic,
club: southampton,
club: tottenham hotspur,
david villa,
club: manchester united,
kaká,
club: liverpool fc,
club: chelsea,
didier drogba,
club: juventus,
club: bayern munich,
club: montreal impact
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But the thought is that his reading of the game (hence that positional sense) is supposedly lacking. I get the fact that Yedlin would be shifted around until he finds a place that 'clicks' but at his age, his place should have been identified and worked upon. John Stones, the Everton defender who is his age (21) already knows his place and is making a name for himself in that place. Yedlin is kinda behind.
Idek, but Pochettino seems open to Yedlin breaking into the first team, and like his Argentine compatriot, Simone, Pochettino is someone who doesn't seem wedded to the idea of a player. He tends to take a lot of convincing (Harry Kane being a case in point). Yedlin, to his credit seems to be keeping his head down and absorbing, and when he speaks with the press, he sounds cheerful and genuine.
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i think his coaches have done him dirty in the past by forcing him to play a variety of positions without ever telling him what his weaknesses were as a defender & how to fine tune those abilities. i don't know much about tottenham, so i won't pretend to but the american system does not favor prospective soccer players because they spend their best/peak years in college rather than doing what other leagues do. usually players in other countries are playing for senior squads at, what, 18? 20? most of the players here are still in college, going to school, traveling with their team & playing against other colleges.
yedlin is gonna be behind because of a list of reasons, just like other us-based players. his place should have been identified from an earlier age but that wasn't the case. now he's just a mash of various abilities that don't translate well to one position that he's usually played in. and the inexperience comes at the fact that most yedlin's age are only being drafted right now into the mls. that's the problem, but it's another can of worms when discussing that, honestly.
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Yeah, in England, by the time you're sixteen, you'll have finished secondary school. If you're an academy grad, the academy hires tutors to get you through your O levels. Some footballers do their A levels (Lampard comes to mind, he got good A levels, good enough to get into law school, but decided to stick with football) but by the time they're sixteen, they're on loan and working.
In the academies, you do get a 'salary' ranging on age, and by the time you break into the first team. Then move on from there. For instance, with Harry Kane, by the time he was eighteen, he was on one of his many loan spells (Leighton Orient, I think at the time), and by the time he came back to Tottenham and got on the first team last year, he'd have already been plying his trade as a forward for the past three/four years in a professional way.
Well, Yedlin seems to be getting a chance to find his feet. They've shadowed him with Kyle Walker, and Pochettino will help develop him. Here's hoping that he comes good.
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