Het grote AFC Ajax-topic #316: Zonder Zdenek ...

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25/3/2006 - Wenger: we waren Ajax te snel af voor Vieira
(Gepost door RvN)

BRON: The Guardian

In the Guardian vertelde Arsene Wenger hoe hij ooit Ajax te snel af was door Patrick Vieira van AC Milan aan te trekken. "Patrick was in onderhandeling met Ajax en ik belde hem vanuit Japan om hem te vertellen dat hij bij Arsenal moest tekenen. Omdat hij een vaste transfersom moest kosten, moest alleen de speler overtuigd worden. Ik overtuigde ook zijn zaakwaarnemers, alhoewel die hem liever naar Arsenal zagen gaan dan naar Ajax. Ze hadden een financieel probleem in Holland omdat Ajax aarzelfde over zijn salaris. Bij Arsenal kregen ze direct alles waar ze om vroegen." [reageer]

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Op zaterdag 25 maart 2006 10:41 schreef Black-Death het volgende:

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hmm

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Op zaterdag 25 maart 2006 11:01 schreef Da_Sandman het volgende:

Dat is toch geen nieuws... Ik kan het me nog herinneren dat ie in verband werd gebracht met Ajax...

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Op zaterdag 25 maart 2006 11:05 schreef kasper het volgende:

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Wat zal hij achteraf opgelucht adem gehaald hebben.

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Op zaterdag 25 maart 2006 10:41 schreef Black-Death het volgende:

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hmm

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A grateful embrace awaits Vieira

Saturday March 25, 2006

The Guardian

The first time I was struck by Patrick Vieira's ability was during a French League Cup game. My team Monaco were playing against Cannes and I had Claude Puel in the middle, a really strong guy who won all his one-on-one match-ups. Patrick came on at half-time and suddenly Puel looked like a kid compared with him. I immediately told myself that this Vieira guy would one day be a great player.

Afterwards I would go and see him at Cannes but it wasn't until January 1996 that I met him. George Weah had been named Fifa's World Player of the Year and he invited me to Milan. I met Patrick during half-time of one of their games. He wasn't playing and seemed completely demoralised, as if he had lost his way. Given how much he loves to play, it must have been torture for him to be at Milan on the bench or, even worse, in the stands. I tried to cheer him up, saying: "Hang on in there, my friend. You'll get there in the end, and this is AC Milan, after all." It was terrible to see this young man, who I knew could conquer and dominate the midfield, totally disheartened. At the time, though, there was a lot of talent in AC's midfield.

The following July I was contacted by Arsenal. Patrick was in negotiations with Ajax and I called him from Japan to tell him to go and sign for Arsenal, and that's how the transfer was done. It was a fairly straightforward one because the fee had been fixed by Milan at around $5m, £3.5m at the time, irrespective of who the buyer was. I told David Dein he should not hesitate over the signing because if he wanted Vieira to come to the club he had to act quickly, otherwise he would lose him.

I also convinced his agents at the time, although they were happy for him to go to Arsenal rather than Ajax anyway. They had had a financial problem in Holland because the Dutch had flinched a bit when it had come to Patrick's salary. At Arsenal, on the other hand, they had immediately got everything they asked for.

I joined the Gunners on October 1 1996. Patrick had arrived a few months before, in July. He had suffered a lot at the beginning. Despite that I immediately picked him; I never had the slightest doubt. To win the ball from Patrick didn't take one man, it didn't take two, it took at least three men around him. And even those three couldn't be sure of winning the ball. He was huge for me, immediately.

He also found a way into people's hearts at once. When the English saw that this guy, who had just arrived and who didn't look anything special with his long gangly legs, was going to Wimbledon and stopping everyone in their tracks, they loved that. The French had a bit of a reputation for avoiding physical contact, of being the romantics of football, but when all the English teams saw this giant who was crunching into everyone the whole time, they couldn't believe their eyes.

I remember going back to San Siro and the Milanese said to me: "What on earth have you done to us, taking Vieira? How could we have let that guy go?" We soon got the feeling we had achieved a real coup by signing Patrick. He was so strong, so dominating. He could destroy, direct and distribute the ball, often all in one go. Whatever one says, there weren't dozens of players of that calibre playing in Europe - there still aren't. As Lauren once said: "He is the lungs of our team."

As a result, every year we told ourselves we were going to feel the heat during the summer because there would be a lot of pressure on us and we would end up selling him - we're not a club with infinite resources. So on the one hand it was a fantastic feeling to have a player like him, on the other it was concerning as well. We always used to say: "How will we be able to replace a player like that if he leaves?"

When Tony Adams' exceptional career finally came to an end in 2002, I decided to make Patrick captain. It was self-evident for me. I thought it might shock some people because Patrick was a foreigner but it went down incredibly easily. After he became captain he gained in authority but he also listened more to others. Every year he matured. During his last season with us he reached yet another level: he managed to distance himself more from things. After all, he was rather impulsive and once he got annoyed he would react really quickly. Last season, though, he controlled himself much better.

That's something I have noticed about myself: sometimes the job reveals a new facet of our personality or rather it reveals to us a facet of our personality that we were not yet aware we had, either because we lacked confidence or because nobody had ever allowed us to discover it. When you have inner resources, you grow into what is required to do your job. That's why I think the captaincy was a huge positive influence on him. He had a greater sense of responsibility. He was sent off only twice after becoming captain.

The trophies Patrick won with France obviously gave him a lot of confidence. But he's a guy who always has self-doubts. I like the type of self-doubt he has because it produces some very positive questioning. It's not the sort that paralyses you during a game, instead it leads to a process of reflection which makes you self-critical. Patrick always analysed his performance with great lucidity.

That was one of his principal qualities: he was always very acute when he analysed his matches and he built on that to enable him to analyse in greater detail any problems that came up in the team. Once captain, he got into the habit of adapting his behaviour and way of thinking to the life and the development of the squad as a whole. It was also interesting for me to talk to him because he had a good feel for any problems that arose. He didn't come out with categorical opinions but rather hypotheses and suggestions.

"Such and such a player has done this but he has also done that. It's true he hogs the ball too much but he's still young . . ." Four years ago he would have said: "That guy's useless." He was much more moderate than Thierry Henry when he looked at the overall performance of the team and of the individuals within it.

When it came to technique Patrick was remarkable and he had an unbelievable instinct for the game. When he was being marked, he was never afraid of taking the ball. Those are the sorts of guys who drive the game forward. When Patrick had his opponent right behind him he took the ball and turned left or right. Any other player who is heavily marked like this and gets the central defender's ball will just return it. With him he always wanted to go forwards. He had an instinct for the game that you either have or you don't. You can't teach that. He was never afraid.

His reading of the game was outstanding. In a tightly marked midfield most players will lay a short ball off. Patrick would turn and suddenly open play up by hitting a long ball to the other wing. That was one of his great qualities.

Arsenal is the most "British" club there is. Patrick is black, French as well, yet he came to symbolise the Gunners. But that doesn't surprise me because above all here people love their club and someone who puts themselves out for their team and for the sheer glory of the club's colours. That's why I maintain that I don't detect any racism in England. I can't say if it's very present in society at large because I don't really know much about that but at least in football there isn't any.

The British are very grateful to those who go into battle. That's because they are a nation of fighters themselves. And more than any other foreigner Patrick symbolised this sort of warrior in the sporting sense of the word. When he was out fighting, he wouldn't let you down. So they forgave him all his escapades off the pitch, if you could call them that, because they knew that once he was on he would give it his all. That's why I liked the symbolism at the end of the 2005 FA Cup final. To see Patrick lining up to take the penalty against Manchester United and their supporters, then giving us victory, was a fantastic symbol of the love between him and Arsenal. It also turned out to be his last kick of the ball for the club.

Patrick constantly has to be pushed. He will naturally tend to stay in his comfort zone, African-style. But when he is in a situation where he has to fight, he is stimulated and what spurs him on more than anything is the challenge of having to fight for something. When you put him on the battlefield, he manages to dig down deep and find the inner resources he needs. It's all down to his hatred of defeat and his pride in being the best. That's why he is Patrick Vieira. And that's why, by the time he left Highbury, he had become one of the greatest players in the club's history.

© Patrick Vieira, 2005. Extracted from "Vieira" by Patrick Vieira, published by Orion priced £18.99. To order a copy for £17.99 with free UK p&p, call 0870 836 0875 or go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop

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Op zaterdag 25 maart 2006 11:54 schreef StarGazer het volgende:
Pires stond destijds ook in de belangstelling van Ajax.

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Op zaterdag 25 maart 2006 11:55 schreef jna het volgende:
Jammer voor Vieira

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Op zaterdag 25 maart 2006 12:45 schreef stefmans het volgende:
Huntelaar opgelet, maak er maar net zo 1 als zlatan

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Op zaterdag 25 maart 2006 13:06 schreef Trancelocator het volgende:

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Nee, dat is echt teveel gevraagd.

_{Doe maar weer een omhaal.}

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Gazzetta publiceert lijst transfervrije spelers

In de Italiaanse krant La Gazetta dello Sport is gisteren een grote lijst gepubliceerd met alle transfervrije, relatief grote spelers komende zomer. Hatem Trabelsi is daar een van.

Voor Ajax kunnen spelers als George Boateng (Middlesbrough), Cristian Poulsen (Schalke 04), Clerc (Lyon) en Ze Roberto (Bayern Munchen) wellicht interessant zijn. Jan Koller (Dortmund) is overigens ook transfervrij, een speler die in het verleden nog in verband met Ajax is gebracht.

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Trabelsi weet ook wat een omhaal is
25-3-2006
Hatem Trabelsi moet zaterdag gedacht hebben wat Klaas Jan Huntelaar kan, kan ik ook. De rechtsback maakte op de training uit een omhaal een doelpunt dat in schoonheid zeker niet onderdeed voor de prachtige goal woensdag van Huntelaar tegen Roda JC in de halve finale van de beker.

Trabelsi was helemaal goed op schot. Maarten Stekelenburg en Hans Vonk moesten meerdere keren de bal uit het net halen na schoten van de verdediger. De doeltreffendheid van Trabelsi op de training is zeer opvallend. De Tunesier scoorde tot nu toe slechts drie keer voor Ajax.

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Op zaterdag 25 maart 2006 13:52 schreef Nashje het volgende:

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