The CEO of tiny Belgian club Eupen offered his opinion last night on where his sought after player Henry Onyekuru should go and play next. He dismissed Scottish football in an offhand fashion. He said the player would be more suited to Germany.
To understand how stupid these remarks are you have to consider who Eupen are, where they play football and how transfer business works. I’m sure none of these things will be news to you; they apparently are to him. Stupidity knows no national boundaries.
We don’t have a monopoly on it here in Scotland. Idiocy is international.
Eupen are languishing near the bottom of the Belgian league at the moment. Probably the only thing the CEO said last night that made any sense – and should end these transfer stories about us at a single stroke – is that they are too near to the drop zone with only a few games left that it would be an act of suicide to sell one of their players right now.
So, forget this one Celtic (as I urged earlier in the week haha) and move on because if a striker signing is crucial to the January business it won’t be this one. There’s no way they will let him leave, no matter what the offer is.
(You’d think, right? Here in Scotland Kilmarnock have just sanctioned the sale of their own best player, for £1 million, whilst stuck in the drop zone and The Daily Record is congratulating them for getting an extra £200,000. Football doesn’t make a whole lot of sense at times. But Eupen seem determined to hang onto their man.)
But it’s his other comments, and his utter dismissal of Celtic and of Scottish football as a whole, that makes me write this piece. They are just plain daft.
First up, he digs out the co-efficient to “prove” that Belgium is a higher standard of league than Scotland. Wow. The co-efficient is higher because a generation of Belgian footballers – all playing abroad, it has to be said – have elevated the national team far beyond not only ours but most other European countries. They are ninth overall. We are twenty-third. That’s not a reflection on the strength of the national league. I would bet most clubs in Belgium would get a tough game against SPL sides … yes, even Sevco. The point is just nonsense.
He invokes Germany; he’s right about that.
The standard there is far in excess of Scotland and Belgium and he might well be right that it will be Onyekuru’s ultimate destination. No-one could realistically argue with that. I actually think if I were a player it’s where I’d go before England (but not before Spain) to develop as a footballer.
The problem with the German thing is that there’s only alleged interest from one club – RB Leipzig, who, if you recall (and how could you not, as the papers are full of it?) are “linked” (I use the term loosely) with a move for Sevco’s Barrie McKay.
This report is pure fiction of course, but there’s a reason the media here thought they’d be able to sell it successfully; RB Leipzig has a stated policy of signing players under 24 and they have loads of money. Simple. They are linked with every young player in Europe, including Moussa.
They will sign people, of course, but only a couple of those with whom they are linked.
What if they decide against signing Onyekuru? What if we’re the last club left standing, and the player himself has listened to this guy and decided not to move to Scotland? Imagine they get relegated in the meantime, and can’t command a decent fee for him?
Does this guy realise the risk he’s taken in making such stupid public statements?
When you are trying to keep interest in your player alive – and they have to, because they don’t have the wherewithal to keep him – it’s kind of stupid to go insulting one of the clubs who is allegedly interested. And what right does anyone in football have to go insulting the standard of someone else’s league in the first place?
You know, I gave this kid a hard time for opening his mouth before negotiations were done; perhaps I was wrong to. Perhaps this is something he learned at Eupen itself. Because the CEO certainly does seem to have a big gob on him, which I find kind of difficult to reconcile with the fact they’re in relegation trouble. Perhaps he should focus on sorting out his own house, before he offers his ridiculous opinion on somebody else’s?
Just a suggestion, of course.