johnyb

Another start for Antonio Rocco Romeo for HB Koge against Fremad Amager (1-1). He sure is making the most of it. 

Goes 90 in a big 4-1 win

Lithuania 
Ricketts starts against Palanga. Has opened the scoring. In the end it was a 3-0 final with Tos scoring the first and third. 
Denmark
Manjrekar James starts against Odense

Boakye played the last 18 minutes for Collogne II against Wattenscheod (0-0). Keeps them two points in the clear.
In Finland, Hanson Boakai made his Veikkausliiga debut, coming off the bench for the second half of FC Inter vs SJK (1-2).
In France CFA, Gurcija and Reid started for Le Havre II at Granville. Le Havre lost 2-1 and Reid was subbed out in the 70th minute. The team is in danger of relegation. 
Unfortunately not. Davies is on the opposing bench though. 
 

Kaye scores on a header on a corner
 

Cristian Gutierrez starting for Colo Colo against O'Higgins in Chile's Primera Division action 

Belgium
Jonathan David starts against Antwerp

That call was bad IMO, attacker bicycle kicked it from 1 foot away and went off his shoulder.  Incredibly unlucky. I felt he played excellent apart from that misfortune.
In the same game, Max made a stellar save with only a few mins left in the game.

Kennedy played 90. Klagenfurt tied it up on a stoppage time goal for a 2-2 finish. A loss to a fellow relegation threatened side would have been terrible for them especially after a run of pretty good results brought them out of the relegation zone. They are presently tied with 3 other teams, 3 points above the relegation zone.

Michael Walsh 6'4" 2001 Centre back from Etobicoke Ontario makes his debut in the Superettan U21 division.
THE START OF TODAY'S U21 MATCH AGAINST GAIS
http://jonkopingssodra.se/startelvan-till-dagens-u21-match-mot-gais/
April 15, 2019 Today U21 plays against GAIS in Folksam U21 Superettan Södra and the match is played at Junebäcken with match start at. 17:00
The starting line looks like this:
Anton Cajtoft 
Igor Popanicic 
Michael Walsh 
Adam Hansson 
Adam Gemheden 
Max Hallin 
Fabian Kryeziu 
Benjamin Tannus 
Ahmad Gero 
Adam Rubin 
Tommy Thelin

And he gets the full 90 in Orlando's season opening 2-2 tie against NYCFC. Wow, Crazy 24 hours for the kid. 

Mark Anthony Kaye went 90 today.. WOOP WOOP!

So he's a resident, not yet Canadian (though could be now since he was working on it) . He has Haitian and American passport. He was my Daughters gymnastics coach before he headed over to Australia and New Zealand so we often spoke.
He was on the Haiti youth radar at one point and was invited to a camp that was held in the Gatineau area, but he could not attend.

Yuri Ruh Dos Santos (21 years old) has signed with Glacis United in the Gibraltar Premier Division.  He made his deubt last weekend.
He has one U20 cap for Canada.

Simon Thomas signed with KFUM in the Norwegian First Division yesterday
https://kaaffa.no/nyheter/kanadisk-landslagskeeper-kaffa-klar

According to this Dero’s son is off to NYCFC 
 

A couple of my friends taught him in grade school. They say he is an outstanding young man from a great family. Best of luck to him. Nice when good things happen to good people. Thanks to @pöhelö and please keep us posted.

So in a couple of hours VPS are gonna play their 2nd game in the Finnish Cup group stage, and since Jonas Häkkinen's paperwork is finally done (it wasn't for the first game...) it also probably means that he's gonna make his debut tonight, possibly from the bench but still. I will be watching him today and post a report later in the other thread. 
Now to make this news a bit more interesting to you I'm gonna post a medium sized wall of background as to what kind of club Jonas has arrived in from Vancouver. 
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So VPS are a Finnish top flight club who come from a city in the West Coast that starts with V. But that is as far as the similarities with Vaasa and Vancouver go as while 70k is a good mid-sized town in Finnish standards, Vancouver kinda shades it in comparison. 
For a long while VPS were just a run of the mill club, traditionally playing long ball football, for most of the time aiming just to survive in the top division and never winning a title since the 40's. So essentially we were one very boring team for any outsider to follow & was justifiably nothing to get excited about when some earlier Canucks played for us (Andrew Barsalona 2014 and Tomer Chencinski 2011). 
But everything changed when the long time assistant manager named Petri Vuorinen rescued the team from relegation in 2015 and was named the head coach before 2016. He decided to change around the entire philosophy of the team, and VPS were suddenly playing very much a possession based game. Along with a renovated stadium with a smooth artificial pitch replacing the old, bumpy stadium mid season, Vuorinen's 4-2-3-1 format genuinely worked and we were actually quite close to title that year. 
So along came 2017 and Vuorinen decided to take his system one step further. Some young coaches were recruited from Portugal to assist Vuorinen, he changed the system to 3-5-2 and turned the football absolutely crazy. Tall defenders who, prior to VPS never looked like they had any business passing the ball, were now passing the ball A LOT. Like, genuinely A LOT. Between the goalkeepers and the 3 stoppers VPS just wouldn't give the ball away, but even under intense pressure from the opposition team, would just pass the ball amongst each other, seemingly more afraid of losing the ball than conceding goals. 
I genuinely believe Vuorinen's system has no precedent in the history of football amongst teams that are not dominant, because when you're a small club and have shite players it just doesn't make any sense to play like Barcelona. But Vuorinen thought otherwise and thought he can develop any lanky tall defenders into Gerard Pique, small young midfield prospects into Xavi and journeymen wingers into Messi. And now put your Swansea example back in your bag, I'm genuinely not exaggerating when I say "no precedent" and "like Barcelona". We ended that season with an average possession of 63.3%, breaking the 70% figure many times. We also had over 600 successful passes a game and almost broke 1000 in one game. Out of ALL clubs in Europe in 2017, only Bayern Munich had higher avg figures in their league than us. Barcelona was 3rd, PSG 4th and City 5th. 
And for the first half of 2017, this....worked. The players genuinely adopted the system in time for the league started, and time and again even stronger opposition teams would be surprised by the system, not knowing at all how to combat "Vepsulona" because usually the worse team doesn't keep the ball. Of course we would still sometimes concede silly goals, losing possession in the ever-going rondo in our own penalty box, but regardless of them mid-summer we found ourselves 2nd in the league standings, and in Europa League qualifiers we surprised the 10 times richer and larger Olimpija Ljubljana 1-0, 0-1; they clearly hadn't scouted us and didn't know what hit them when the VPS carousel set off and left them looking like a low league club. And the 30 times larger Bröndby that was our next opponent beat us 2-0 at their home but at our stadium we had the advantage of a smooth artificial pitch. We took the control of the game from the first whistle, scored an early 1-0, the entire stadium if not the city was pumped and bouncing... and then our GK scored a ridiculous own goal from a corner. So we won 2-1 anyway but was not enough. 
Then after the disappointment opposition teams finally learned to combat us in the league too and we hit a rapid downward spiral, not winning in 13 games a row or something. And the way we played suddenly looked absolutely horrible and frustrating, as understandably when a possession based football goes wrong, it looks like the players aren't even trying so we dropped to midfield in the league eventually.
So after the disastrous end to the season, Vuorinen was forced to tone the Barcelona aspect down for 2018 and we had a bit of a "meh" season with a bit of a mishmash playing system, with some signs of the ball playing defensework retained, but the formation reverted back to 4-5-1 and some counter attacks attempted. We still finished 6th but after all this, Vuorinen has now attracted a lot of criticism for refusing to go back to the long ball system. 
So now we're in 2019, and unfortunately the new stadium has turned out to be very expensive to maintain and the cashflow isn't what it used to be. We've had to offload many important players, have a lot of injuries and only got a GK just before the first game, so people are expecting us to fight against the relegation mostly. Now I know Häkkinen has also played in the central midfield in the past, but that position has enough players as it is. Whereas apart from Jonas the club has 2 serious stoppers right now. One of them is Timi Lahti who is something of a club legend by now and will not give away his spot in the first 11 any time soon, but the other is the young Eero Auvinen, who didn't really impress last year nor in the first game. So at least the fans are counting on Häkkinen a lot & expecting the young Vancouverian to impress and perhaps even claim the other spot in the opening 11.
Finally, below there is a nice video made by Copa90 about our club & how it is for a foreign footballer to settle in here (albeit from before the new system): 
 
--
Tl;dr? In short - Jonas' new club might be fighting against relegation this year, but the club now counts on Jonas a lot because of financial reasons & still have knowledgeable coaches who believe in player development, and the playing system which likely still relies a lot on the defenders' on the ball skills which, hopefully is going to improve Jonas's skills. So I hope it's a good place for him. 

I believe this sums up all the moves for the week.
Fraser Aird (23) loaned from Dundee United to Queen of the South in the Scottish Championship.
Rocco Romeo (18) loaned from TFC to HB Koge in the Danish 2nd tier.
Liam Millar (19) loaned from Liverpool to Kilmarnock in the Scottish Premiership.
Ballou Tabla (19) loaned from Barcelona to Albacete in La Liga 2.
Adonijah Reid (19) signs Le Havre Ac in Ligue 2.
Will include Zorhan Bassong because he is still eligible for us. (19) transfers to Cercle Bruges of the Belgium 1st tier.
That is a lot of young Canadian talent, imagine it will only increase with the CPL starting!!
While looking at Le Havre wiki page noticed that they have a 17 year old Canadian goalie playing on their reserve squad. Nikola Curcija, anyone know anything about him?

Rocco Romeo on loan to HB Koge 
 
 

Zorhan Bassong has transffered to Cercle Brugge. It is not in the article but it looks like LIlle get 35% of a future transfer
https://t.co/fMWE2rCbtq

Check out @smfc’s Tweet:
Was just looking up Oliver Minatel's old club and saw this.  Looks like Ethan Gage is reviving his career a little in Australia. 
Apparently had a great Cup run with a lower league team and got noticed.  South Melbourne not in A League but one of the most storied and successful clubs in Australia historically and have been trying to get into A League for years.
Nice to see.  By all accounts he was an outstanding youth player we had very high hopes for.
Check out @smfc’s Tweet:
 

A guy who rarely got off the bench on the worst team in the Scottish Championship is unlikely to be a star

Gowtham Kirupakaran has signed with Real Aviles in the Spanish 4th tier. 
https://t.co/P1OwXPGHLy
He is a 20 year old from the Toronto area, and he played a few minutes in League 1 Ontario this past summer.
https://www.league1ontario.com/roster_players/26040869

Finished in 7th last year in the top flight. Nice move up for Boakai, hopefully he can get his career back on track.