World Football Thread XV - Life after the World Cup

[Colonâ„¢]

Previous threads...

World Football Thread XIV - Italy: Hail to the Champions
World Football Thread XIII - to Berlin
World Football thread XII
World Football Thread XXX - Germany 2006
World Football Thread X - Germany 2006
World Football Thread IX - Weltmeisterschaft Ausgabe
World Football Thread VIII - The beautiful game?
World Football Thread VII
World Football Thread VI
World Football Thread V
World Soccer Thread IV
World Soccer thread III
World Soccer Thread II
Worldwide Soccer Thread I
Newcastle vs. Spurs gloating thread.

[Terra Nullius]

You remind me of a boy I knew in school too. I punched him for not shutting the **** up.

Oh **** I'm scared.

Answer the question or learn to control your behaviour.

Hell, if you had half a brain you'd manage to do both.

[Ming]

Terra Nullius and Colonâ„¢...

Chill or be chilled!

[duke o' york]

So who are your teams going to buy before the new season, who do you really want (that they can reasonably afford without a shock arrival of a Russian oligarch), and who has been rumoured to join that you could really do without?

[Ecthy]

After the world cup is before the world cup.

[Ecthy]

Colon for punching the sh!t out of losers then going off to sh@g the prom queen.

[Terra Nullius]

What's your problem Etchy?

[Ecthy]

Someone's looking for a fight

[Winston]

Ecthy, why do you always insist on reigniting things hours after they've calmed down, be it by mod interference or not?

[Ecthy]

Why do you beat your wife Legman?

[Locutus]

Originally posted by duke o' york
So who are your teams going to buy before the new season, who do you really want (that they can reasonably afford without a shock arrival of a Russian oligarch), and who has been rumoured to join that you could really do without?

Our most important acquisitions so far are actually two new coaches: Rutten and Eijkelkamp, the former assistents of Hiddink at PSV. PSV dearly wanted to keep them on as co-head coaches, but we stole 'em from under their noses They're both former Twente players so they loved to come back. Rutten was already our manager before leaving to PSV a few years ago and brought us the national cup for only the second time in our history, so expectations are high

Our only player acquisitions so far are Rob Wielaert, an experienced and very capable defender, and Cees Paauwe, a goalie who played for us before and was pretty crap then, but he'll only be our substitute goalkeeper so no major worries there (our first goalie is brilliant and has reliability as his middle name). But apart from our previous substitute goalkeeper we didn't lose any players either and our team did very well in the second half of last season, so no reason to complain, really. We have a lot of young players, we can only get better.

No real wishes or rumours for other new players, although we're currently trying out Luke Wilkshire, a central midfielder who played for Australia at the WC and is a free agent (his contract at Bristol City expired a few weeks ago). Nobody here really knows him yet, but he was recommended by Hiddink who thinks very highly of him so we'll see.

[duke o' york]

Sander "Reliability" Boschker?

I don't rate Wilkshire at all by the way, and feel that Twente should be looking for better players than those from Bristol City.

[Footie Mad]

How are the two swedes in Twente? Touma and Kennedy I mean, Majstorovic was great when playing for my club (Malmö FF) but he's at Basel now if I remember correctly
.

[Locutus]

What the hell is wrong with Boschker? He's a living legend over here, one of the greatest players in the history of our club. He could be playing for a big team right now but his club love kept him at Twente until he was too old to succeed elsewhere...

According to Hiddink Wilkshire is too good for League One, he should be playing higher than that but is too modest to actively pursue this. And he got a lot of playing time at the WC, which not many too players in the Dutch competition can say. If Hiddink -- one of the best managers in the world right now -- recommends him I'm be happy to see Twente giving him a shot. Whether or not he's actually any good we'll find out soon enough...

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Footie Mad
How are the two swedes in Twente? Touma and Kennedy I mean, Majstorovic was great when playing for my club (Malmö FF) but he's at Basel now if I remember correctly
.

Didn't get to see Kalmar FF vs Twente on Saturday? Touma scored a hattrick in the second half, which allowed Twente to go through He and Bakircioglu are two of the best players of our team, together with aforementioned Boschker and our top scorer N'Kufo. Especially Bakircioglu is quickly becoming the people's hero, though Touma is certainly not inferior as a player.

Majstorovic was a great defender, probably one of the best in the Dutch league, but he just didn't fit Twente's playing style. We were all extremely happy with him while he was here, he was one of the biggest stars of the the team together with Boschker and N'Kufo (Touma and Bakircioglu only broke through this season). But when Basel bought him (for a lot of money) suddenly and miraculously our team started playing much better So in retrospect he's good riddance, but only in retrospect. While he was here everyone was too much in love with his individual skill to realise he was a burden to the team as a whole. He's still a great player, but his one weakness is that he's just no good in playing the ball forward and setting up attacks, which is a key aspect of Dutch football. We tried to delegate that responsibility to other players but it was no good. Purely in a defensive role he was one of the best players in the Dutch competition though, in the right team he should be able to shine. I was mildly surprised not to see him at the WC.