Adelukan Compensation Agreed

[BessexRED]

Won't be going to a tribunal as compensation between the two clubs has been agreed.

Is is daft to suggest that we've not been playing him to keep his value low as a negotiating point? Perhaps, we'll find out I suppose if he starts playing more often now.

I'd like to see some more of him from the bench, he's an impact player.

[phantom]

Wouldn't be the first player to be held back from playing for a financial reason

Going back a long time ago, can always remember being on a train with Robin Hulbert he said City got him on the cheap as if he played one more game for Swindon they had to pay him more money, which they could not afford to do

[Lrrr]

Probably going to be limited during the run in as it would probably be a fairly big risk to include him in the squad over O'Dowda, Eliasson and Weimann at the moment while pushing for play offs, wouldn't be surprised to see him get a decent amount of game time start of next season if we're in this division.

[Super]

One for the future.

[Ivorguy]

8 minutes ago, Super said:

One for the future.

Which future? The future that comes or the future that never comes?

[Mr Popodopolous]

Believe he and Eisa should have been loaned in January to League One clubs- though in this case would it have had an impact in the amount we had to pay Scunthorpe?

[archie andrews]

2 minutes ago, Ivorguy said:

Which future? The future that comes or the future that never comes?

Garlic breads the future......

[Red Skin]

16 minutes ago, Ivorguy said:

Which future? The future that comes or the future that never comes?

The future in which O'Dowda leaves, Eliasson starts, and Adelukan is a regular on the bench.  Succession planning 

Good to see the club make agreements rather force a tribunal.  I like the way we do business.  Get the feeling we treat players and other clubs with respect, which hopefully is reciprocated especially in transfer dealings.

[Mr Popodopolous]

11 minutes ago, RedSkin said:

The future in which O'Dowda leaves, Eliasson starts, and Adelukan is a regular on the bench.  Succession planning 

Good to see the club make agreements rather force a tribunal.  I like the way we do business.  Get the feeling we treat players and other clubs with respect, which hopefully is reciprocated especially in transfer dealings.

While there are positives to take from that and while I agree with much of that post, isn't having him here and same goes for Eisa not doing much frankly- risking stalling development?

Eisa- should have been offered to say Plymouth on loan. We have a good relationship with them and we know how loan spells there helped Vyner, Bryan and Reid. Or Barnsley for example- see below as to why.

Adelukan- maybe Plymouth too. Or back to Scunthorpe on loan, a club he knows- perhaps even say Barnsley as they play football the right way and are good with youth. Plus are challenging at the right end.

And talking of pathways and succession planning...so much admiration for that club.

[Spike]

40 minutes ago, JonDolman said:

With someone as good as eliasson often on bench, I'd be surprised if Adelakun would have had a chance anyway, especially after his long injury. 

Isn't Adelukan right sided though? Eliasson and O'Dowda are clearly left-sided meaning he'd be more likely to challenge Weimann on the right? 

[Red Skin]

10 minutes ago, Mr Popodopolous said:

While there are positives to take from that, isn't having him here and same goes for Eisa not doing much frankly- risking stalling development?

Agree.  Loans now but this is about succession planning. I was addressing a particular point about the future.

Right now I can't see Adelukan making the bench ahead of Eliasson. 

Off subject but I'd play Eliasson and O'Dowda, especially if Semenyo starts with Diedhiou.   With only Diedhou in the middle it's too easy for two defenders to cut out crosses.  Add in Semenyo and it could be a whole different scenario.

I have been concerned all along with how LJ can keep all these promising players happy.  Unfortunately, we'd need a bench the length of the as long as the Lansdown to get everyone on there that fans would like to see!!

[Spike]

2 minutes ago, JonDolman said:

He played left in that one game he started for us. Played right or left for Scunthorpe.

Hmmm, I always thought he was a right sided player, maybe I'm wrong. Does seem strange that we could have 3 players fighting for the left side when our right side is a little weak at times, I always think of left sided players as harder to come by but in the last few years we seem to find plenty of them. 

[BigTone]

2 hours ago, BessexRED said:

Won't be going to a tribunal as compensation between the two clubs has been agreed.

Is is daft to suggest that we've not been playing him to keep his value low as a negotiating point? Perhaps, we'll find out I suppose if he starts playing more often now.

I'd like to see some more of him from the bench, he's an impact player.

I wonder how much compensation they are giving us

[Selred]

2 hours ago, Mr Popodopolous said:

Eisa- should have been offered to say Plymouth on loan. We have a good relationship with them and we know how loan spells there helped Vyner, Bryan and Reid. Or Barnsley for example- see below as to why.

What annoys me is that Charlton wanted him on loan. 

He is a Greenwich boy, nice and local for Charlton, and they ended up signing an awful winger from Gillingham called Parker who they constantly play up top.

Eisa could of been in a play off fighting team, with some great players around him (Taylor, Williams, Cullen, Aribo). But instead is stuck training with us, yes learning our ways, but he has only played 1 season of league football, he needs more game time.

[Port Said Red]

9 minutes ago, Selred said:

What annoys me is that Charlton wanted him on loan. 

He is a Greenwich boy, nice and local for Charlton, and they ended up signing an awful winger from Gillingham called Parker who they constantly play up top.

Eisa could of been in a play off fighting team, with some great players around him (Taylor, Williams, Cullen, Aribo). But instead is stuck training with us, yes learning our ways, but he has only played 1 season of league football, he needs more game time.

Is that Josh Parker? I once saw him score one of the best goals I have ever seen against our youth team, playing for QPR Youth. I thought he was destined for great things then.........

[Selred]

3 minutes ago, Port Said Red said:

Is that Josh Parker? I once saw him score one of the best goals I have ever seen against our youth team, playing for QPR Youth. I thought he was destined for great things then.........

That's him, apparently has pace (but yet to be seen at Charlton). Don't really understand what his strengths are. Panic buy for Charlton!

[Port Said Red]

14 minutes ago, Selred said:

That's him, apparently has pace (but yet to be seen at Charlton). Don't really understand what his strengths are. Panic buy for Charlton!

The game I saw we were 0-3 in a cup game and they switched him from the right to the left wing and once he was able to cut inside he took us apart. We lost 5-3 in extra time and he scored the 5th by beating for players and hammering a shot into the top corner from 30 yards out. Seems that might have been the highlight of his career.  

[Mr Popodopolous]

39 minutes ago, Selred said:

What annoys me is that Charlton wanted him on loan. 

He is a Greenwich boy, nice and local for Charlton, and they ended up signing an awful winger from Gillingham called Parker who they constantly play up top.

Eisa could of been in a play off fighting team, with some great players around him (Taylor, Williams, Cullen, Aribo). But instead is stuck training with us, yes learning our ways, but he has only played 1 season of league football, he needs more game time.

That could have suited him well.

[iamalagerdrinker]

I know a few people up here was telling me it would be about £600,000 at the start of the season but with him not playing who knows

[Davefevs]

8 hours ago, iamalagerdrinker said:

I know a few people up here was telling me it would be about £600,000 at the start of the season but with him not playing who knows

Funnily enough my spreadsheet has £600k in it....no idea why I set that figure....was that rumoured at the time to be the likely compensation?

What do people think we have now agreed to pay?

[BS4 on Tour...]

13 hours ago, phantom said:

Wouldn't be the first player to be held back from playing for a financial reason

Going back a long time ago, can always remember being on a train with Robin Hulbert he said City got him on the cheap as if he played one more game for Swindon they had to pay him more money, which they could not afford to do

I remember some talk about how we dropped Andrew Jordan after a certain number of games (14?!) to avoid a further payment - I could be wrong....

[Son of Fred]

17 hours ago, Spike said:

Isn't Adelukan right sided though? Eliasson and O'Dowda are clearly left-sided meaning he'd be more likely to challenge Weimann on the right? 

On 'attitude alone he can never challenge Weimann,and attitude is everything.

[Guest]

19 hours ago, Ivorguy said:

Which future? The future that comes or the future that never comes?

The future that repeats the Engval one, where we hardly play him at all and he eventually gets returned to where he came from, at a loss to the club

[robin_unreliant]

41 minutes ago, Bri Stool City said:

The future that repeats the Engval one, where we hardly play him at all and he eventually gets returned to where he came from, at a loss to the club

You're getting him confused with Mo Eisa then.

[Fiale]

Yep always loved that club, I said a while ago if we ever go to a Wessex / South West philosophy with a strong academy then bringing in someone like Frank de Boer to run the whole thing rattling of new young talent would be great to see.

At Ajax, One Star Goes, Another Is Going, and More Are Always Coming

AMSTERDAM — Last summer, seven of Ajax’s brightest stars were summoned to a room at the Dutch club’s training facility. Edwin van der Sar, the goalkeeper-turned-chief-executive, and Marc Overmars, once a jet-heeled wing and now the Ajax sporting director, had a video to show them.

Its premise was simple. Each of the players was paired with an iconic figure from Ajax’s illustrious history, one who shared a position, a nationality or (in one case) a bloodline. Goalkeeper Andre Onana, in one example, had van der Sar. Forward Kasper Dolberg got Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Justin Kluivert was juxtaposed with his father, Patrick. Frenkie de Jong had Christian Eriksen, and Matthijs de Ligt was compared to Barry Hulshoff, a defender from Ajax’s all-conquering team of the 1970s.

The idea, van der Sar said, was to “show them how to become a legend at Ajax, and in Holland.” The film was designed to persuade the players, the club’s crown jewels, to resist the temptation to move to England, to Spain, to Italy, for another year or so, to “stay with each other, to win prizes and trophies here and then make the next step.”

The tactic worked. Six of the seven players should feature for Ajax when it hosts Real Madrid in the last 16 of the Champions League on Wednesday. De Ligt will marshal the defense. De Jong will orchestrate the attacks.

Only one of the seven will be absent: Kluivert resisted the emotional overture to follow in his father’s footsteps. He refused to extend his contract and was sold to Roma. At Ajax, they understand why he made that decision — the allure, for a teenager with a famous name, of forging his own path — but when they mention Kluivert now, it is with a hint of regret, a tinge of frustration.

Not because he left, but because he left so soon. “If a player goes after just half a year in the first team, like Kluivert, we are disappointed,” said Said Ouaali, the director of De Toekomst, Ajax’s famed youth academy.

In January, Ajax made another video. This time, it was for public consumption, posted on the club’s social media channels. It was a little more than a minute long, but it showcased all of what Erik ten Hag, Ajax’s current manager, called de Jong’s “special qualities.” It was titled, “Frenkie Futuro,” and was released to celebrate the confirmation of the 21-year-old’s move to Barcelona, set to be completed this summer.

De Jong is the shining light of this Ajax team, a player so promising that he has, more than once, been compared to Johan Cruyff himself. Yet there was no regret at his departure. “Barcelona, enjoy the future, like we do,” Ajax wrote on its official Twitter account.

The feelings will be the same, this summer, when de Ligt — a player who has been at Ajax since he was 8 — departs, as he is expected to do. A 20-year-old defender who is regarded by some Premier League scouts as the best prospect in any position in world soccer, de Ligt could join his friend at Barcelona, or he might end up at Juventus.

Either way, there will be no sadness, no sense of loss at what might have been. Ten Hag might allow himself to wonder a little, he said, at what could happen if “I could keep them for two or three years,” into their prime, but that is it.

“I will be proud,” he said. “The scouts who found them will be proud. Marc Overmars will be proud. Everyone will be. If they transfer to a big club, you are happy for them.”

This is, of course, what Ajax has always done. Since Cruyff himself left for Barcelona in 1973, it has churned out a stream of talent for others to enjoy: Johan Neeskens, Marco van Basten, Frank Rijkaard, Clarence Seedorf, Edgar Davids, Kluivert, Wesley Sneijder, Rafael van der Vaart, Eriksen, Ibrahimovic, Jan Vertonghen, Luis Suárez. The Ajax alumni list reads like a who’s who of modern soccer.

The formula that has allowed it to do so hangs on the wall in ten Hag’s office, opposite a series of black-and-white portraits of Rinus Michels, the mastermind of the great team of the 1970s; Cruyff, its star; and Louis van Gaal, the man who restored Ajax to the European pinnacle in the 1990s, with a team reared almost entirely at De Toekomst.

Ten Hag laughs when he looks at that wall — “They set you a standard,” he said, blowing out his cheeks — but he is serious when he discusses the Ajacied, a cross between a mission statement and a creed for the club.

These are the traits the club seeks to instill in every player who wears its jersey, or who passes through De Toekomst, as well as its coaches and staff. There are 11 of them; they have been arranged like a team. This being Ajax, they are set out in a 4-3-3 formation. They range from taking responsibility and initiative to remaining disciplined and having fun.

The approach, clearly, works. No team in Europe produces more professional players than Ajax. The club’s figures put it ahead of Partizan Belgrade and Dynamo Kyiv. According to Ouaali, a staggering 86 percent of players who are at De Toekomst at age 16 will go on to have pro careers.

But that is not to say it has not been adapted, altered, fine-tuned over the years. That process started in 2011, when Cruyff returned to a club that — in van der Sar’s words — “did not feel like Ajax anymore.” Cruyff and the cadre of former players he brought with him wanted not only to restore the focus on youth development, to shed highly paid, aging players, but to change the way Ajax worked.

“We focus always on the individual,” Ouaali said. “We don’t think about age groups, like the Dutch federation or like other clubs. It can be hard for coaches because they want results as well — to be successful, to be promoted to the next step up — but we try to find coaches who focus on the development of players, who learn the individual, not the team.”

The club recognized, too, that it had to work faster than before. Players were no longer staying in the Eredivisie until they were 23 or 24; they were leaving at 20 or 21, if not earlier. “At 19, they needed to be ready to play in the first team,” ten Hag said, “because at 20, they are gone.”

That meant more physical work at younger ages, and an end to players going to school outside Ajax. Now, they study at De Toekomst, so they can maximize the hours they spend in the classroom and on the training field.

Ajax borrowed methods found in Montessori education to mix age groups, and its under-18 team was abolished to “increase pressure on the talent,” Ouaali said.

The club’s second team, Jong Ajax — which plays in Dutch soccer’s second tier — no longer would be filled with senior players; now, most of its members are still in their teenage years. “We had to speed up the process,” ten Hag said. “They had to be good quicker.”

All of it was a formal acknowledgment of Ajax’s place in the 21st century soccer firmament. It is telling, for example, that Ouaali sees his job, and that of De Toekomst, not as to produce players for the first team, but to produce them for “Ajax, then the Dutch national team, then the top international level.”

The order is important. Ajax is not just about developing players; it is also concerned with winning. Van der Sar, in particular, was keenly aware of the need to keep its protégés long enough to benefit from them. It is why he has loosened the wage budget enough to make staying around for an extra year or two appealing. It is why the club is seeking to expand its global footprint, opening an office in New York; agreeing to run a youth system at Guangzhou R&F, the Chinese Super League team; finding ways to monetize its name.

De Jong and de Ligt have done what they were asked to do when they watched that video last summer. They might not have won a trophy, but by carrying Ajax to the last 16 of the Champions League, to a meeting with Real Madrid, they have “given something back,” as van der Sar put it.

When they — and possibly other members of the seven — depart, they will go with the best wishes of the club, and then the whole system will start again.

That, after all, is Ajax’s real gift: its ability not to produce one player, or one generation of them, but to keep on going. It is what makes players’ leaving not only desirable but necessary.

“We have to give the path to the next one,” van der Sar said. “If players stay too long, the next one cannot play. The whole thing chokes.”

He cited an example from just a couple of years ago. Davy Klaassen was Ajax’s captain then. He was 24. The club had high hopes for a young midfielder, Donny van der Beek, but he needed a place to play.

“Donny was saying, ‘O.K., Davy, come on now, it’s your time to go,’” van der Sar said.

Klaassen did go: to Everton. On Wednesday, van der Beek will be in midfield against Real Madrid. Another player, another one off the production line, giving something back.

 

[iamalagerdrinker]

9 hours ago, Davefevs said:

Funnily enough my spreadsheet has £600k in it....no idea why I set that figure....was that rumoured at the time to be the likely compensation?

What do people think we have now agreed to pay?

It's what a few of my mates who support Scunthorpe said it would likely be at the start of the season I imagine cause it's not going to court Scunthorpe got that fee or a similar reasonable offer

[EmissionImpossible]

1 hour ago, Fiale said:

Yep always loved that club, I said a while ago if we ever go to a Wessex / South West philosophy with a strong academy then bringing in someone like Frank de Boer to run the whole thing rattling of new young talent would be great to see.

 

At Ajax, One Star Goes, Another Is Going, and More Are Always Coming

 

Barcelona has agreed to pay Ajax more than $85 million for the 21-year-old midfielder Frenkie de Jong.CreditJasper Juinen for The New York Times

 

 

 

Image

Barcelona has agreed to pay Ajax more than $85 million for the 21-year-old midfielder Frenkie de Jong.CreditCreditJasper Juinen for The New York Times

By Rory Smith

• Feb. 9, 2019
• •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  

AMSTERDAM — Last summer, seven of Ajax’s brightest stars were summoned to a room at the Dutch club’s training facility. Edwin van der Sar, the goalkeeper-turned-chief-executive, and Marc Overmars, once a jet-heeled wing and now the Ajax sporting director, had a video to show them.

Its premise was simple. Each of the players was paired with an iconic figure from Ajax’s illustrious history, one who shared a position, a nationality or (in one case) a bloodline. Goalkeeper Andre Onana, in one example, had van der Sar. Forward Kasper Dolberg got Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Justin Kluivert was juxtaposed with his father, Patrick. Frenkie de Jong had Christian Eriksen, and Matthijs de Ligt was compared to Barry Hulshoff, a defender from Ajax’s all-conquering team of the 1970s.

The idea, van der Sar said, was to “show them how to become a legend at Ajax, and in Holland.” The film was designed to persuade the players, the club’s crown jewels, to resist the temptation to move to England, to Spain, to Italy, for another year or so, to “stay with each other, to win prizes and trophies here and then make the next step.”

The tactic worked. Six of the seven players should feature for Ajax when it hosts Real Madrid in the last 16 of the Champions League on Wednesday. De Ligt will marshal the defense. De Jong will orchestrate the attacks.

 

Defender Matthijs de Ligt has been at Ajax since age 8, but he is widely expected to depart this summer.CreditJasper Juinen for The New York Times

 

 

 

Image

Defender Matthijs de Ligt has been at Ajax since age 8, but he is widely expected to depart this summer.CreditJasper Juinen for The New York Times

Only one of the seven will be absent: Kluivert resisted the emotional overture to follow in his father’s footsteps. He refused to extend his contract and was sold to Roma. At Ajax, they understand why he made that decision — the allure, for a teenager with a famous name, of forging his own path — but when they mention Kluivert now, it is with a hint of regret, a tinge of frustration.

Not because he left, but because he left so soon. “If a player goes after just half a year in the first team, like Kluivert, we are disappointed,” said Said Ouaali, the director of De Toekomst, Ajax’s famed youth academy.

 

In January, Ajax made another video. This time, it was for public consumption, posted on the club’s social media channels. It was a little more than a minute long, but it showcased all of what Erik ten Hag, Ajax’s current manager, called de Jong’s “special qualities.” It was titled, “Frenkie Futuro,” and was released to celebrate the confirmation of the 21-year-old’s move to Barcelona, set to be completed this summer.

Editors’ Picks

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Esto es Frenkie de Jong... #FrenkieFuturo pic.twitter.com/L8qGei6Bp5

— AFC Ajax (@AFCAjax) January 23, 2019

De Jong is the shining light of this Ajax team, a player so promising that he has, more than once, been compared to Johan Cruyff himself. Yet there was no regret at his departure. “Barcelona, enjoy the future, like we do,” Ajax wrote on its official Twitter account.

The feelings will be the same, this summer, when de Ligt — a player who has been at Ajax since he was 8 — departs, as he is expected to do. A 20-year-old defender who is regarded by some Premier League scouts as the best prospect in any position in world soccer, de Ligt could join his friend at Barcelona, or he might end up at Juventus.

Either way, there will be no sadness, no sense of loss at what might have been. Ten Hag might allow himself to wonder a little, he said, at what could happen if “I could keep them for two or three years,” into their prime, but that is it.

“I will be proud,” he said. “The scouts who found them will be proud. Marc Overmars will be proud. Everyone will be. If they transfer to a big club, you are happy for them.”

This is, of course, what Ajax has always done. Since Cruyff himself left for Barcelona in 1973, it has churned out a stream of talent for others to enjoy: Johan Neeskens, Marco van Basten, Frank Rijkaard, Clarence Seedorf, Edgar Davids, Kluivert, Wesley Sneijder, Rafael van der Vaart, Eriksen, Ibrahimovic, Jan Vertonghen, Luis Suárez. The Ajax alumni list reads like a who’s who of modern soccer.

The formula that has allowed it to do so hangs on the wall in ten Hag’s office, opposite a series of black-and-white portraits of Rinus Michels, the mastermind of the great team of the 1970s; Cruyff, its star; and Louis van Gaal, the man who restored Ajax to the European pinnacle in the 1990s, with a team reared almost entirely at De Toekomst.

Ten Hag laughs when he looks at that wall — “They set you a standard,” he said, blowing out his cheeks — but he is serious when he discusses the Ajacied, a cross between a mission statement and a creed for the club.

These are the traits the club seeks to instill in every player who wears its jersey, or who passes through De Toekomst, as well as its coaches and staff. There are 11 of them; they have been arranged like a team. This being Ajax, they are set out in a 4-3-3 formation. They range from taking responsibility and initiative to remaining disciplined and having fun.

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The Ajax chief executive Edwin van der Sar said there was no sadness in letting de Jong move to Barcelona. “We are like father and son. Only now the son has outgrown the father.”CreditClaude Paris/Associated Press

 

 

 

Image

The Ajax chief executive Edwin van der Sar said there was no sadness in letting de Jong move to Barcelona. “We are like father and son. Only now the son has outgrown the father.”CreditClaude Paris/Associated Press

The approach, clearly, works. No team in Europe produces more professional players than Ajax. The club’s figures put it ahead of Partizan Belgrade and Dynamo Kyiv. According to Ouaali, a staggering 86 percent of players who are at De Toekomst at age 16 will go on to have pro careers.

But that is not to say it has not been adapted, altered, fine-tuned over the years. That process started in 2011, when Cruyff returned to a club that — in van der Sar’s words — “did not feel like Ajax anymore.” Cruyff and the cadre of former players he brought with him wanted not only to restore the focus on youth development, to shed highly paid, aging players, but to change the way Ajax worked.

“We focus always on the individual,” Ouaali said. “We don’t think about age groups, like the Dutch federation or like other clubs. It can be hard for coaches because they want results as well — to be successful, to be promoted to the next step up — but we try to find coaches who focus on the development of players, who learn the individual, not the team.”

The club recognized, too, that it had to work faster than before. Players were no longer staying in the Eredivisie until they were 23 or 24; they were leaving at 20 or 21, if not earlier. “At 19, they needed to be ready to play in the first team,” ten Hag said, “because at 20, they are gone.”

That meant more physical work at younger ages, and an end to players going to school outside Ajax. Now, they study at De Toekomst, so they can maximize the hours they spend in the classroom and on the training field.

Ajax borrowed methods found in Montessori education to mix age groups, and its under-18 team was abolished to “increase pressure on the talent,” Ouaali said.

The club’s second team, Jong Ajax — which plays in Dutch soccer’s second tier — no longer would be filled with senior players; now, most of its members are still in their teenage years. “We had to speed up the process,” ten Hag said. “They had to be good quicker.”

All of it was a formal acknowledgment of Ajax’s place in the 21st century soccer firmament. It is telling, for example, that Ouaali sees his job, and that of De Toekomst, not as to produce players for the first team, but to produce them for “Ajax, then the Dutch national team, then the top international level.”

The order is important. Ajax is not just about developing players; it is also concerned with winning. Van der Sar, in particular, was keenly aware of the need to keep its protégés long enough to benefit from them. It is why he has loosened the wage budget enough to make staying around for an extra year or two appealing. It is why the club is seeking to expand its global footprint, opening an office in New York; agreeing to run a youth system at Guangzhou R&F, the Chinese Super League team; finding ways to monetize its name.

De Jong and de Ligt have done what they were asked to do when they watched that video last summer. They might not have won a trophy, but by carrying Ajax to the last 16 of the Champions League, to a meeting with Real Madrid, they have “given something back,” as van der Sar put it.

When they — and possibly other members of the seven — depart, they will go with the best wishes of the club, and then the whole system will start again.

That, after all, is Ajax’s real gift: its ability not to produce one player, or one generation of them, but to keep on going. It is what makes players’ leaving not only desirable but necessary.

“We have to give the path to the next one,” van der Sar said. “If players stay too long, the next one cannot play. The whole thing chokes.”

He cited an example from just a couple of years ago. Davy Klaassen was Ajax’s captain then. He was 24. The club had high hopes for a young midfielder, Donny van der Beek, but he needed a place to play.

“Donny was saying, ‘O.K., Davy, come on now, it’s your time to go,’” van der Sar said.

Klaassen did go: to Everton. On Wednesday, van der Beek will be in midfield against Real Madrid. Another player, another one off the production line, giving something back.

Unreadable 

[SedRA]

22 hours ago, Super said:

One for the future.

 

22 hours ago, Ivorguy said:

Which future? The future that comes or the future that never comes?

@TomF did you ever get round to introducing that ‘yawn’ reaction? 

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, RedSA said:

 

@TomF did you ever get round to introducing that ‘yawn’ reaction? 

Standard emojis work or you can opt for a gif..

[WhistleHappy]

On ‎06‎/‎03‎/‎2019 at 10:59, Ivorguy said:

Which future? The future that comes or the future that never comes?

Umm,  these things take time!