De Guzman Is The New Hargreaves

Dear Sam,

Thank you for the writing the post, I couldn’t bring myself to do so. I’m busy with my dart board with his picture on it right now.

Posted from  Canada

Grrrrrr….really…just grrrrrr….

But the more I think of it, the Dutch have invested more in deGuzman’s skill development that Canada has, having nurtured him along since he was 12. So if anyone can have a “claim” on him and his skills, it would have to be the Dutch.

I still hope that we meet Holland in South Africa and he isn’t in the squad That would be a slight consolation.

As for the Hargreaves comparison, fair to a certain point. But Canada passed on him, and at least he can claim to be English.

Posted from  Canada

Thank you!!!! Unfortunately though people like you and me are hard to come by in Canada these days. I don’t get how people rather play for an addoptive country either, but like I said in the other post, Canada needs some exposure and better media coverage, because remember, the media controls what the public watches. Good for you though, I’ve got some Dutch, Scottish, Swiss, Italian and Irish background, and I would never dream to play for any of those countries. It’s about honour and this guy doesn’t have it. He should be kissing Hart’s feet for wanting to give him a chance, but if he wants to go and be a flop on the dutch team, so be it, but it still disgusts me.

Posted from  Canada

check that, Mitchell, of course.

Posted from  Canada

Let me add this as well, there are plenty of amazing players that come out of Brazil and they don’t play in their domestic league, and yet, I have never heard of a Brazilian to play for a country that has invested money in his development,hmmmm wonder why. Maybe it’s because they respect and honour their country a little bit, and are proud to put on the Brazilian jersey. Evidently, the players of Brazil understand that, in order to have a great team, you must build one and use any sources in so doing, not jump ship the first chance you get because you want to be in a world cup and get some exposure, because any arsehole knows that with time glory will come. Imagine already, in the space of 6 years, Canada has been the home of two super talents, and who is to say that they may not produce more. These talents need to understand that Canada can become great if they would just come together, after all soccer is a TEAM sport.

Posted from  Canada

Well De Guzman is welcome in his new country, but I do feel he didn’t made the right decision. Not the one I would have made anyway.

Alex, can’t tell if you’re serious or not, but Eduardo da Silva (Croatia), Luis Oliveira (Belgium), Deco (Portugal), Lucio Wagner (Bulgaria), Paulo Rink (Germany), Leandro de Almeida (Hungary), José Altafini (Italy), Marcos Senna (Spain) and Marco Aurélio (Turkey) are a few Brazilans who choose to represent a different nation with whom they had no direct ties with (other than football). It happens more often than some might think.

Posted from  Netherlands

Edwin, you are right, I forgot to mention though that I’m sure those players would love to play for Brazil, but Brazil can only have 22 guys to a roster, remember, and it is very hard to break into the team. It doesn’t change the fact that they still honour their country. Needless to say that if it does happen it doesn’t happen as frequently in Brazil as i does in Canada. You have a point though.

Posted from  Canada

My point is that Canada could greatly benefit from the prescence of an impact player like de Guzman. They could use some help, is what I’m trying to say, and it disguts me that he rather play for an addoptive country that is already a superpower in football. You see Brazil doesn’t need any help, they have got all kinds of talent to choose from and to have that resource comes with time.

Posted from  Canada

But Alex… I’d put the blame on Canada for not organizing themselves. Hell, the kid’s a talent, and when he’s 12, Feyenoord swoop him up. Surely the Canadian FA should have kept a keen eye on him, and as soon as he turned 15 picked him for U-17 tournaments, then shift him up to the U-19s, U-21s, and show him he was “wanted” by Canada. Instead, he was never called up by Canada’s youth teams. Same thing for Hargreaves. At 19, he recieved his first call-up for any international game, and it was a U-21 for England. Although he had left Canada for Bayern Munich when he was 16!

Canada can’t wait for players to be 18-19, and then start asking them to turn up for their country. Quality players know that if they’re not called up when they’re 15-16 for the U-17s or 17 for the U-19s, then they’re not that wanted, especially when the country in question isn’t exactly a powerhouse.

Canada are a regular feature in U-20 tournaments on a global scale. How come when Canada made up their squad for the 2005 U-20 World Cup in the Netherlands, nobody called up on de Guzman? He wouldn’t have been the youngest in the squad, nor the only player from the Dutch Eredivie (Ramalho and De Jong also played in the Netherlands)… Why wasn’t he in the squad? Not good enough? Undecided? Why wasn’t he part of the 2003 squad either?

See, when you make a good player feel like he’s unwanted (a good way of doing this is by not giving him a call-up before he obtains a second nationality), then how can this player believe he has a “future” with the country? You can feel like Canada would benefit from the presence of a high-profile player, but Canada should give itself the means to do that. And when a country doesn’t bother to call up a player in its youth sides, then it must accept that the player can be dissapointed by the country, and accept the proposition to play for another country. Just like Hargreaves did.

Posted from  France

Granted Canada may not have the best scouting, but if a kid is playing well for a team in Holland and knows his country doesn’t have any players that equal his ability, then it doesn’t take a braniac to realise that you are wanted. Perhaps he feels closer to Holland, because he spent his entire footballing career there, but it’s definitely not because he isn’t wanted.

Posted from  Canada

Alex - fair enough, I understand your point. Wouldn’t want to call the Dutch national team a superpower. They’re up there with the likes of England and Spain as overrated underachievers. But yes, De Guzman could have helped Canadian soccer move forward. I’m sure more talent will show and help the team though.

Posted from  Netherlands

Alex, you missed out on my point.

It’s not a question of “scouting”. It’s a pure question of logic. The Canadian FA knows when youth players leave canada to train with European sides. They should have a shortlist of all Canadians playing in top clubs, even if the players are only 14. When Hargreaves left Calgary for Bayern Munich, I doubt nobody in the Canadian FA knew about this kid, and how the big Bayern Munich had just moved to swoop him up. He was 16. Logical consequence? Next game of the U-17, U-19 U-20 or U-21s give him a call-up, and play him for 10 minutes at the end of the game. Like that, you show him you’re counting on him.

I’m an English national and a French national. I consider I’m English rather than French. But if I had been any good at football when I was 17 (when I got French citizenship), and England hadn’t called me up for any youth games, I would assume that the England managers weren’t interested in me. So if the French FA called me up for a U-19 game, then I’d accept it, and probably pledge my future to France. Even if I would have had better chances to play regularly for England (say, if I was a goalkeeper). You can’t expect players to wait until they’re 19 and they’ve got another nation’s FA telling them they’re very interested in them to start wondering if they’re any good.

Posted from  France

Yes but you must use common logic, you’re comparing apples to apples; England to France, but remember as I said Canada are on a totally different level from Holland. Canada doesn’t have any player of de guzman’s ability, so wouldn’t he just use common sense and think that maybe it is not a fact that he isn’t wanted but more he just slipped under the radar. 12 for me, is quite a young age for a player to be shipped off to another country for development in any sport, so how what are you ensuing? At what age should a national team be scoping out players? Be realistic, nobody can tell how good a player will be when he is so young, unless he’s like Ronaldinho. The bottom line is that he was never unwanted by Canada, if they knew they could of claimed him, they would have, believe me.

Posted from  Canada

Alex, do you mean that since 1999 (when Julian de Guzman started getting U-20 call-ups) the Canadian FA didn’t know that he 1) had a brother 2) had a footballing brother 3) had a footballing brother that was Canadian 4) had a footballing brother that was Canadian and was a talent since already training with Feyenoord?

Sure, they couldn’t know when he was 12 how good he would be (even now, nobody really knows how good he’ll be). But between when he was 12 back in 1999 and when he turned 20 in 2007, stuff has happened. His brother must have mentioned him to the Canadian FA, who should have noticed that he got a regular place in Feyenoord’s set-up in 2005… When he was just 18.

Canada called up Julian de Guzman to the U-20s when he was just 18. That was back in 1999. If they weren’t aware of his brother’s talent, then there’s nothing that can be done to help them, I fear… Didn’t they even bother to call him up to the U-20s when he turned 18?

Take Slovakia, who are just one small place in front of Canada in Fifa’s useless ranking. They have a boatload of players who leave for foreign leagues (mainly Germany, Russia, Ukraine and the Czech Republic), and loads of players who are eligible for several countries, since the eastern bloc dissolved after their birth, so they can technically ask to play for the country of either of their grandparent’s countries… And it’s rare to have all four grandparents who are of the same nationality as the player. So what does Slovakia do? They use the U-17, U-19 and U-21s as “filters”. They call up massive amounts of players, and often change 12-13 players from one call-up to the next. The aim isn’t to force these players to play for Slovakia (youth selections aren’t binding), but to get the players to “choose” at a very young age, hopefully before they get a second nationality (often German), that they want to play for Slovakia. And pretty much any player that leaves for a “big” club (Zenit St-Petersburg, for instance) gets an instant call-up for the relevant category. Why doesn’t Canada do this? Because the FA is a mess. Youth sides should focus on detecting Canadian talent. So how can the Canadian FA get their knickers in a twist over a player they never picked? Not picking him (and picking other players instead) shows that the Canadian FA didn’t think he was a big talent. The Dutch FA has probably been talking to him since he’s 17-18, because they’re very well organised. By showing him that they want him, they’ve doubtlessly cast a positive light on playing for the Netherlands in the future.

U-17, U-19, U-20, U-21 and U-23 selections are there for a reason : to “test” the NT of tomorrow. If you never choose a player for any of them, how do you expect him to even believe he has a possible future for the NT? It’s not a question of de Guzman being unknown and then suddenly becoming great and dropping his country in one go. He was known to the FA because his brother was a regular feature of the NT, and should have been at least watched because he was playing in a relatively important team at a young age. Also, there can be signs that show a player is “forgotten” : at the U-20 World Cup in the Netherlands in 2005 (Jonathan was 18, and since he lived in the Netherlands and had just become a first team player for Feyenoord, he probably paid attention to this), Canada preferred to call Simon Kassaye, a player who was without a club rather than him. A player without a club. That pretty much says it all. I don’t know anything about Mr Kassaye, but taking a player without a club to a “World Cup” over a player who’s a first team player in an important European side means that either he’s a great player (but then why doesn’t he have a club??) or that the FA doesn’t care in the least about the other player. De Guzman must have noticed that, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the Dutch FA didn’t point it out to him, and even have their U-20 coach call de Guzman and say that he would have chosen him… Had he been Dutch.

Posted from  France

Hmmm, that’s a fair observation, but then why didn’t the Netherlands claim him earlier? You say the youth tournaments are a great way of attracting young talent for future WC teams so why hadn’t they made him Dutch before? By your analysis, other than at the club level (Feyenoord in particular, not Holland as a whole, so credit Feyenoord), the National program had only been talking about citizenship for a couple of years, max. What I’m trying to say is that Canada and Holland were essentially, in the same boat, it just came down to de guzman’s decision. Ohh, and if I remember correctly, de Guzman was offered a spot on the team for the 2007 u-20 tournament, held in Canada and declined, but I guess you could argue that they had waited too long. But again, then there is the question of why Holland didn’t claim him earlier, if they wanted him so badly.

Posted from  Canada

Because he wasn’t Dutch… He only recieved Dutch citizenship on Feb 6th 2008. After applying for Dutch citizenship in June 2007, which was when the U-20 WC in Canada started… You need to live for 5 years in the Netherlands to apply for Dutch nationality. He’d already been a first team regular for Feyenoord since 2005, so I understand why he was less than impressed at Canada’s bid to call someone up to the U-20 tournament when he’s 19 and 9 months old… Because De Guzman should have been in the 2005 edition.

The Dutch FA would have started approaching him when he was 16 or 17, and upon discovering that he was Canadian, probably guessed he would just go on and play for Canada. But when they noticed that he wasn’t called up by Canada’s youth levels, even for the 2005 U-20 WC in Holland (the far less talented De Jong, who also played in Holland was however part of that team, despite playing a division below De Guzman), they probably pointed it out to De Guzman. He might have talked with the FA, he might not have. But the point remains that the Canadian FA chose Kassaye instead of De Guzman for a Youth World Cup that was in De Guzman’s back yard. De Guzman could have even watched the games, and felt that he should have been called up. Watching Canada finish last in their group, and Holland go to the quarter-finals probably made him think that it was strange that the “smaller” of the two sides didn’t want him, but the bigger did. Because I have no doubt that the Dutch FA talked to him a few times, and that they got their coach, or another high-ranking member of the FA to say to De Guzman how they would have liked him to be Dutch to be able to call him up to his squad… And why not get a better result than a quarter-final loss on penalties against the eventual finalists…

Posted from  France

Hmmm, well there seems to be alot of “would have”, for the Dutch National program. We can never be sure that Holland would have approached him at 16 or 17. Look, alot of what you are saying is speculative, but does make sense, though I still feel that if you are born and raised in a particular country then you are considered to be of that nationality, and hence should play for that national team. There are no buts about it, because you see, it doesn’t matter if the Canadian team never called him before the 2007 tournament, he should play for his team and country, regardless of the state of the particular FA. If de Guzman was born there and moved here and then moved back at 12, I would have absolutely no problem with him playing for Holland(actually after Canada, Holland are #3 on my list), but the fact that not only he wasn’t born there, but doesn’t have any Dutch blood as well, leaves me baffled. Though I’m against the idea of him playing for the Phillipines or Jamaica, it would actually make more sense than for him to play for Holland. The fact of the matter is that if he really cared about Canada he would have played when Canada called him. I’m not saying he would have to like the FA, because frankly I don’t think anybody does, but to show up for the fans wouldn’t make him a sell-out and in fact, he would be the most respected player on the entire team in my book, but it didn’t happen that way so what can you do.

Posted from  Canada

In my opinion de Guzman doesn’t stand a chance to get a place as a starter the coming years with player like Seedorf, Sneijder, v. der Vaart, Afellay and Drenthe playing at the same position. It would have been better for him to play for Canada where he could have become the starplayer rather than play for the Netherlands.

Posted from  Netherlands