Catalan sports paper Sport claims that several English clubs are interested in Barcelona Atlètic wing attacker and Israel youth international Gai Assulin (17).
Player's agent Pini Zahavi would be trying to take the player to the English Premier League and the entourage of Gai is using the offers to put pressure on Barcelona to improve the sports and economic situation of the player at Barcelona.
Read more:
Chelsea and Manchester City following Gai
Gai could soon make first team debut
Gai disappointed about missing promotion
Sunday 2 November 2008
Barça B: English clubs interested in Gai
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11 comments:
I don't believe a word. Gai is staying, i'm 100% confident.
This is getting bloody annoying.
I hate Pini Zahavi. He's a vulture.
Pini Zahavi is an asshole. Someone should punch him in the face.
It seems to me that Barcelona has not been focusing enough on this wonderkid. If he leaves because he feels that the club does not recognize his talent like we should, the responsible persons jobs ought to be reconsidered.
We can simply not afford to loose talents of this standard. The transfers of the likes of Giovani, Merida and Iago was bad, but this can simply not be accepted.
The article is pure media bullshit imo. I am sure Gai is not thinking of moving anywhere. Barcelona can offer him everything, it's up to him to take it...
@apakabar:
Perhaps you would like to offer a solution to the problem (if a problem exists at all) in addition to your blanket criticism of Barca's management?
If (and there is a big IF here) the problem exists, it probably is a consequence of that he got better offers elsewhere.
If a big club like Barcelona is not capable of holding on to the talents, something must have been done wrong.
Maybe I was a little harsh is my prevoius post, but I really feel that a big club like Barcelona should be able to offer our talents good enough terms for them to stay. "Small" clubs like Tottenham should under normal circumstances not be able to offer our best talents any better terms we are.
I know the legislation is an issue regarding offering professional contracs to young players, but in this case it seems to me that developement of the player is the problem. At this age the best talents should be given some amount of time in the first team. Instead of Gai, we see players like Pedro and Sanchez on the first team. With all due respect pretty ordinary players compared to extraordinary talents like Gai, Bojan etc.
@apakabar:
You raise some very good points. However, I'm inclined to view this "problem" not so much in terms of whether or not Barca is capable of holding on to its talents, but whether it can hold on to its talents while staying within reasonable boundaries.
Clearly, a club like Barca has the ability to keep any youngster they want. Just pay him an absurd amount of money and offer him a starting spot in the first team. But this is not realistic, because Barca fans demand regular titles from the first team, and a starting XI comprised of youngsters ain't gonna get it done.
Gio's transfer to Tottenham wasn't so much about Barca losing him as it was about Gio having unreasonable demands. The kid has potential, but he is hardly a world beater. I think if you look at his first season objectively, you'll agree that he actually played a lot for a newly-promoted youngster. I think his leaving to the Spurs had more to do with his "me first" attitude and self-serving advice from his agent (Pini Zahavi!) than it had to do with Barca not making an honest attempt to keep him. Personally, I think it may have been for the best that he left. He is not a team player, and I think his attitude would disrupt the current team harmony in the locker room.
As for Gai, I think a recent post on this blog stated that Pep was thinking about giving him some time in the first team. But first, Gai needs to obtain Spanish citizenship. Without Spanish citizenship, players registered for a lower-level team cannot play for a higher-level team.
There is also the consideration of the B team and the long-term success of Barca Athletic. For Barca's youths to grow and gain experience, it is best for Barca Athletic to be in Segunda or one league higher. But no lower. Gai is a key player in the Athletic team and is vital to their bid to stay up this year. He also features regularly for the youth squad, whereas he would only appear once in every five or so games for the first team. So he's getting a lot of experience with Barca Athletic. (He is behind Eto'o, Messi, Henry, Iniesta, Hleb, and Bojan, after all.)
Also, mental strength, maturity, and tactical awareness are important. While Gai can dribble and deke well, it's not clear that he has sufficiently developed the three traits above to be ready for the first team. He's only 17. He's also still quite frail at this point, I think, and is too easily pushed off the ball. Another year to grow in strength is not a bad idea.
Regarding the promotion of Pedro and Sanchez, all I would say is that in any team, you need role players. I agree with you that Gai has more potential than those two, but you also need players who are happy to back up the starting XI, come off the bench, and make the best use of whatever minutes are given to them, however few those minutes may be. This is why having players like Sylvihno and Jorquera is beneficial to the team, and criticism of them is misplaced.
Gai's time will come, and I hope it will come soon, just like you hope. But I just want to encourage you to consider the competing and very difficult demands placed on Guardiola's--winning titles with the first team while introducing good youth prospects into the senior squad is not easy. Pep is doing a stellar job right now with a squad that mixes experience and youth. While it may be nice if he could gradually incorporate Gai into the squad during this season, he should not do it at the expense of winning la liga.
@Blaugranafan:
Good post! Overall I agree with you in most points. Especially the balance is very important. As you say, we shall not keep the talents at any cost, and Giovani had high demands. On the other hand I think Giovani's situation was very difficult. Originally he was only supposed to be a backup player for the squad. With the injuries of Messi, Ronaldinho and Eto'o last season a very heavy burden was put upon the young shoulders of Bojan and Giovani. They were both playing far more than planned and in my opinion not beeing matched the right way. Bojan had a great success, but Giovani had a harder start. Because of the big pressure Giovani suddenly found himself in a bad situation as Bojan was becomming the fan's successful local favourite, Giovani even recieved bad behaviouor from the audience at some point. I believe that with more careful matching of Giovani, he may still be in Barcelona.
Regular success is demanded by the fans, but I see no reason why we can not use a player like Gai in the end of games we are leading by several goals. It would give him both useful experience and would be good for his confidence and development.
As for Gai's lack of a spanish citizenship, I believe the rules are not that he can not compete at high level, because we have got some "non-EU spots" available. I think the issue is that once he has played for the first team without the citizenship, he can not return for playing at the B-team. I remember the same problem was a factor when Messi was promoted. He still played some matches and there were some complains from some other teams. I think it was Alaves and Deportivo among others. We got away with it then, so I don't see why this should be a problem this time. Anyway the club could have got the citizenship in order already if they wanted to. From what I have read they delayed it on purpose to make him less attractive to english clubs as they would have problems granting him a work permit.
If we look at our B-team, they currently play in segunda B. In my opinion that is high enough. I don't think we would be better off if they played one level higher because that would involve that we would be forced to use older players to keep the level up. The B-team is all about developing our talents. If the greatest talents must give their place for less talented, but older (and better) players to keep the team at this level, it is not worth it. If we compare ourself to Real Madrid's B-team, they play at one level higher than us, but they really don't come close to producing as many of the really good talents as Barcelona. But then again, there can also be a lot of other factors leading to this.
You are right that a lot of players are in front of Gai in the line. But if we look at last year we had a pretty simular situation. A 17 years young boy like Bojan had alot of players in front of him. (Messi, Eto'o, Ronaldinho, Henry, Gudjohnsen and Giovani?) Still Bojan played in 48 official games last season. Far too many for his age.
Pep, and the rest of the management have a really difficult job balancing all issues. There is no doubt about that. But I believe it would have been wise to start gradually incorporate him already this season, both to keep him happy and to ensure his development.
(And please feel free to correct me if I have misunderstood or don't remember correctly :-)
this is a bull shit i think but for me i can never abuse the media cos we thoght they were lying when we were told of iago and to be specified he went and now guadiola refuses to give a boy of that talent a real chance to prove his self to the world and dont u think the boy may be considering a switch away.when he saw some one like sanchez already been promoted to the first team and pedro that i think he is of the same potentials with gai.but i would never want him to leave cos he is of very great talent.
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