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Arsenal wants Afellay…

December 3rd, 2007 | By: Jan | 12 Comments »

PSV talent Ibrahim Afellay is being followed by Arsenal. Reps of the Gunners watched the 21 year old left footer play a good game last weekend and insiders claim they will start negotiations with PSV soon. They need to hurry, since Ronald Koeman’s Valencia also has their eye on Afellay, which probably means that if Valencia snatch him, Van der Vaart’s move to Valencia will be off. Which opens the door for Barca or Arsenal to talk to Rafael…

Exciting times ahead….

Tags: Afellay, Arsenal, Group C, Oranje, Ronald Koeman, The Netherlands, van der Vaart

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Comments

By goose | December 4th, 2007 at 2:47 am

Good skilled player but too small and too injury prone!

Posted from Netherlands

By Miguel | December 4th, 2007 at 3:51 am

I agree, he gets injured a lot but Fabregas is also small and look how good he’s doing, Sneijder small and Iniesta small. These kind of players have something other players lack and this is “vision”.

Afellay has a lot of qualities and I can see him at the very top, he has a lot of guts and courage. He is the type of player we need at the Dutch national team and also I think it’d be good for him to play under a coach like Wenger who knows exactly how to develop young players although he has some experience already.

By ferenc | December 4th, 2007 at 5:03 am

Miguel: i have been watching sneijder and iniesta for longtime. at the very beginning i thought that sneijder would become an almost zidane quality number 10. sometimes he delivers good football,sometime not at all. in the last couple of months iniesta has been outstanding. to be honest - he’s much more better than wesley. and i don’t say that as a barca fan but as an oranje fan. sneijder had only 3-4 games at real (at the very beginning of this season) and that’s it. fabregas has become world class player under wenger. i don’t know too much affelay, i saw him only once but his performance was promising. after all,i think clarence and rafael are our 2 - really top, world class - offensive midfielders. rafael is at the level of fabregas and iniesta (who is one of my fav players),clarence is better than them.

is it not too early for affelay to go either to valencia or to arsenal? like drenthe… (actually _marca_ wrote yesterday that drenthe would go to chelsea during the winter transfer period. but this is marca.)

Posted from Hungary

By Lerkot | December 4th, 2007 at 7:18 am

Ferenc: Hehe. I will never understand why you like Seedorf so much.

Afellay could be something. Just because he’s injury prone right now doesnt mean he has to be it in the future. I think he would fit quite well as an backup for Fabreagas.

By goose | December 4th, 2007 at 8:37 am

latest; Psv has broken open Affelays contract and he now has a contract till summer 2011!! looks like Psv are not taking any risks…if he wants to go now they will get a lot of money to buy of this contract

Posted from Netherlands

By Caleb | December 4th, 2007 at 10:13 am

@ferenc: about Sneijder, I think he just needs time to settle in. Lots of players have a period of settling in when they go to a new club, especially when it’s such a big change like Ajax to Real Madrid. He started great, but then has dropped off. I’ve also seen this (and experienced it personally) before too. When you first start playing at a new club you feel the rush and it gives you and extra boost and you perform great, but later the rush dissipates and you are left trying to settle in. Take a look at Rooney, his first CL game with Man U he scored a hat-trick (a lucky hat-trick, but still a hat-trick). After that though he took a long time settling in in order to get back into good form. Note: I still think he is an overrated player, but his example shows my point.

About the Afellay matter - good for PSV. If some foreign club is going to come in and steal your talent, you might as well get paid real well for it!

Posted from Japan

By goose | December 4th, 2007 at 1:54 pm

VAN BASTEN WILL QUIT AFTER EYRO08…just in..OFFICIAL!!!

Posted from Netherlands

By Miguel | December 4th, 2007 at 3:37 pm

I agree with Caleb and besides Iniesta might be playing better at the moment but he has ben a Barca player for some time and it’s till now that he’s really showing his best form. Sneijder will be a great player and I agree he is not playing the way he did the first 4-3 weeks but he is doing well, I watched the Madrid game and the Spanish commentators really liked the way he played.
I don’t know about Van der Vaart being a better player than Wesley or at least in my opinion he (Rafa) hasn’t delivered at international level while Wesley has had many great games with the Netherlands.

By Jan | December 4th, 2007 at 4:21 pm

I love this discussion… :-)…

I am an Iniesta fan. I love how he sees and uses space, his one-touch play and his ego-less play… That to me is a big difference to the Ajax boys. Ajax players always seem to want to display their skills and humiliate the opponent. Think Richard Witschge and his shenanigans against Feyenoord I wrote a post on. Raf doesn’t do that too much anymore, but Sneijder still has a bit of that. Having said that, both Raf and Wesley would do much better in Barca than anywhere else. Real Madrid to me is not an oiled football machine and that makes it hard for Sneijder to excel. Schuster doesn’t have the balance (yet), which Rijkaard and Nees do have at Barca. Put Sneijder in Barca and he will be playing much more impressive within that flow. Real is limping. If Guti plays bad - and he does that too often - Sneijder can’t impress either.

I think Raf is a more gifted player than Wesley. It comes more natural to Rafael, it seems (like with Van Persie). Sneijder needs to work harder, it seems to me, but is maybe more reliable… I don’t know.

To me, Seedorf is smarter and more astute in his play than Raf and Wes are now (experience as well as skills) but Raf and Wes are more dynamic. More teamplayers than Seedorf.

I personally haven’t seen Sneijder as being very effective for Oranje. Not when it counts, that is. He was great vs Scotland in 2003/2004 but let us down in Germany. In the qualifications he was ok, but I feel Rafael could have produced more if he wasn’t injured at the WC.

So, in my opinion: it is 1) Rafael, 2) Sneijder and 3) Seedorf.

If Real starts to swing, we’ll see the real Sneijder. And the real Rafael will be visible once he finally moves to Barcelona.

Afellay reminds me of Van der Vaart and I am certain he will produce the goods if he moves to a bigger team.

Posted from Australia

By Igor | December 5th, 2007 at 1:41 pm

very interesting comments…i think that of the two (sneijder and vdv), van der vaart has the most potential to be a truly great player but the problem that i see with him is that he needs the team to be built around him to be at his most effective. that is certainly the case at Hamburg now (as it was back in his ajax haydays) where he gets to dictate the play and is the “main man”. i don’t think that he has ever been in a similar situation at oranje, where he has been part of the supporting cast more than anything. His position in the NT has also never been consistent, he’s been playing a lot of right wing lately, i also remember him playing shadow striker in some of the euro 2004 qualifiers. the closest he probably came to being one of the principal players for oranje when was advocaat was debating whether to play 4-3-3 or employ a midfield diamond with vdv at the apex before euro04, but since the manager chose 4-3-3 we never got a chance to see what raf could really do.
sneijder on the other hand seems to be better at integrating himself within the team, which might be a testament to his high work rate.

Posted from Canada