By DAN KARELL
DeAndre Yedlin and scores of U.S. Men’s National Team fans received the news they were hoping to hear on Tuesday morning.
Tottenham announced that Yedlin would join the club in January, completing a reported $3.5 million deal that was made last August following the World Cup. Yedlin received his UK work permit without needing a Latvian passport, which he was trying to acquire through a grandparent, and will settle into Tottenham’s squad as a backup for now to right back Kyle Walker.
CONFIRMED: We are pleased to confirm that @yedlinny will be joining the Club in January. #COYS
— Tottenham Hotspur (@SpursOfficial) December 23, 2014
“DeAndre is a young player with great potential who has already achieved a lot in Major League Soccer,” Tottenham head coach Mauricio Pochettino said in a statement. “It is important for his development that he is given the time to adapt to his new surroundings both on and off the pitch and we believe that by coming to us in January it will give him the best opportunity to do so.”
Yedlin just completed his second season with the Seattle Sounders after signing as a Homegrown player prior to the 2013 season. He made 62 total appearances, starting in 61 games and scoring two goals and adding six assists. Yedlin’s also made 10 appearances for the USMNT, including three appearances off the bench at the 2014 World Cup.
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What do you think of this news? Excited to see Yedlin head to Tottenham now? Do you see him making a few appearances in the second half of the EPL season?
Share your thoughts below.
Admittedly, I’ve not followed Spurs at all this year, but now I’m hoping for Kyle Walker to have a horrible run of form.
hope he does well, but he’ll have some serious work to do.
Yedlin has put him self into an interesting situation. Spurs are very much in transition right now and Pochettino isn’t really settled on anybody.
The two RB’s on the team; Walker and Naughton, haven’t played much this year so theoretically the door is open. Dier (CB), Davies (LB), Chiriches (CB), Rose (LB-LW) have all filled in at RB recently but the spot is wide open until Walker or someone else takes it back. RW is a bit more crowded with a long list of quality wingers.
That said Spurs have a number of serviceable players like Yedlin on loan. So I can see this going a number of ways. He could establish himself in the squad, go on loan, play for the youth/reserves… A lot of transfer rumors around Spurs as well so his first five months (Jan-May) with the club are really important.
He’s not that good
Can’t help but feel this was the wrong team to move to. It’s hard to see him displacing Kyle Walker in the starting lineup and at 21 Yedlin needs to be getting playing time. I think it was time for him to go to Europe I just don’t think Spurs are the right spot.
kyle walker probably won’t be playing every game, and getting cup games and such isn’t a bad situation for a 21-year-old. he could also be loaned out, like walker still was at 21.
i agree, though: if he’s not getting *any* minutes for any team, that’s bad.
I don’t think cup games and training with Tottenham are enough, I’d rather see him loaned out personally.
I have a strange feeling that they will put him out at wing/wingback no really fullback. He’s to raw for fullback.
*not really
*too raw
This is awesome. I love Yedlin’s game, and hopefully this is a great step for him. will be great to see him fight for playing time, but just practicing against EPL players should help him.
If, as the poster above says, we look back in a few years and say he should have stayed in MLS, that would mean he just wasn’t as good as we thought.
Yedlin and Garza fullbacks, with fabian johnson at right mid and healthy Joe Gyau on the right at forward. Pretty potent attack for the nats
As long as he can touch an EPL player, he will be better off. And if he isn’t, it is his fault, because he wasn’t good to start with.
“The poster above” would like to clarify that of course playing game in and game out in EPL has a higher expected benefit on one’s development than playing game in and game out in MLS. However, practicing vs. EPL players and sitting on the bench vs. playing 90 minutes in MLS – this is highly debatable.
highly debatable only by MLS fans.
funny you put it that way, because i’ve always considered it a situational thing, but it seems like every pro player and manager says that no matter what, you *must* get game time if you want to improve (i think it was keller who was saying that again just recently?).
so you’re right, i think it’s only us fans who think it’s even debatable.
funny
Just so we are on the same page, do you agree that MLS is at least three tiers below EPL in quality? If not, I am not having a discussion with you. If so, how much does playing time make up for lack of opponent quality? Will Yedlin improve if he plays 90 minutes every week with my pick up team? Probably not. So you agree that playing time is not the only factor to consider in a player’s development. Jumping up to the top 2 or 3 league in the world and playing some and practicing every day against world class players will either help him or prove to everyone that he is not good enough to hack it against the best.
Sitting in MLS and letting everyone debate how great you *would* be in the big leagues does not help the player and does not help the nats decide if he can hack it against the best.
What is a tier of quality? Please define it for us, oh wise one, since accepting that you are right is apparently a prerequisite to discussing anything with you.
You are equating the quality of MLS to the quality of your pick-up team?!? Do you play in front of 40,000 people if nothing else?
i’m not going to answer your ‘three tiers’ question, so you may not see this, but just to make perfectly clear:
i’m not sure about what ratio of practice/gametime in a given league is acceptable for a promising young player–i may actually be in agreement with you.
what i was saying is that, by and large, i’m finding that the people who are paid big $ to play/manage in soccer are all in agreement: If you don’t get gametime, you’re not going to improve.
I think we are in agreement. There is a ratio that no one knows that would provide optimal development for a young player. He needs to fight for playing time in England, if he gets it, even if it is intermittent, that is a bigger achievement than starting every game in MLS.
What is the alternative? Sit in MLS and wait until BPL comes with a guaranteed starting offer? Not happening.
Three tiers?? One or two at most. Nearly every (if not every) team in MLS has national team players on it, which is a pretty objective standard to judge quality. That compares favorably to the Championship, the Eredivise, etc….
So, you are suggesting that it is absolutely NOT debatable as in an axiom that practicing with Tottenham and not playing in games is absolutely better for everyone’s development than playing full time for Seattle Sounders. And whoever disagrees is a delusional MLS fan. Did I get this right?
If he stays at Seattle, his ceiling is a good to great MLS player. If he goes to England and fights for a position with Tottenham, his ceiling is BPL starter or more, good for any national team.
Well, first of all a certain Landon Donovan begs to differ. Secondly, I am not suggesting that he spends the next 12 years in MLS. I am suggesting 2 years or so.
Stop. Del Griffin can’t handle that much nuance. It’s either one way or the other and that’s what we have to debate and at the end of the day anyone who doesn’t agree with Del Griffin is an ignorant fool and will be reminded of that fact repeatedly.
“I am demanding that [SBI posters] refrain from making complementary comments of our former players leaving the league in this thread.”
You forgot to say league of choice.
He also misspelled “complimentary”.
Too bad he’s going to England at such a young age. According to some here they don’t develop players.
Yes, believe it or not, it is quite possible that in hindsight several years from now it will be concluded that he would have been better off staying home and getting consistent playing time for 1-2 more years.
Or, we look back and say what a great move this was and it really took his game to the next level. You might as well give both sides.
Agreed. That’s why I said “quite possible” and not “definite”. I believe that he would be better off staying for a while. However, I do acknowledge that it’s not clear-cut. It’s probably 70-30 in my mind. Certainly not 0-100.
You should look at Zusi and Bedoya. Most people look at them as about equivalent players, similar age, similar game. Zusi stays in MLS, looks pretty crappy at this point, not playing with Nats. Bedoya playing in France is taking his game to next level emerging as one of our better central mids.
Yes, based on that single example, it’s clear that the right move is to go to Europe immediately every single time.
One of the biggest difference between Europe and MLS is high pressure games and thats where Bedoya shined in the WC and Zusi folded and there no denying it. The euro guys always step up in those situations.
Bedoya didn’t do all that much in the WC. To me, he was just a guy who was on the field. Nothing too good or too bad. Zusi made more mistakes, but he did have 2 assists though. So, all-in-all, I don’t see how you can say that Bedoya really outshined Zusi. It’s at least debatable.
slowleftarm, you know enough about US soccer’s history of players going overseas to say something smarter than that. There is only a single example of US players successfully going overseas at a young age? Really? Only one?
Try reading what I actually said and then respond. It was a sarcastic response to Del Griffin’s usual tripe.
In reality, Europe will be the right move for some and staying in MLS will work better for others. It’s facile to say “Bedoya moved to Europe and moved ahead of Zusi so therefore Europe is always better.”
I think that they are still about similar level players and have a similar standing with USMNT. Bedoya’s form was better over the last few months, agreed. However, it can easily be reversed in 6 months. If anything, this example equates staying in MLS vs. going to Europe.
I don’t think their game are similar. Bedoya’s game is much more polished, always played better defense, can ran all day and gives you some offense here and there. I see Zusi more of a finesse player that has a sweet crossing ability.
Well, if they developed more players their national team would surely be better. And more than 1/3 of the players in the PL would be English and they wouldn’t need to import a young American right back. But those failings shouldn’t affect Yedlin. I think he’ll do really well in England and sooner than people imagine too.
If we’d develop players as well as they do we wouldn’t need to import 1/3 of our national team players.
Agreed. It’s embarrassing. That said, the answer isn’t to follow England and its relatively unsuccessful develop program. We should be trying to emulate the real big boys of the sport – you know, the countries that actually go deep into big tournaments.
You mean, like Germany?
Yeah, seeing as how they are in the last four at basically every major tournament, it seems they know what they’re doing.
We could do a lot worse than England, and as a matter of fact , we do. After all, they’re on re-tooling of their system away from being a serious World Cup contender just like Germany was a decade ago.
By the time we catch up to England who knows who the current footballing power will be. It could be England
Truly good trolling is more subtle but thanks for the effort. You troll at an England level, which is to say mediocre and underachieving.
Ignorance thrives in narrow minds. Of course it’s easy to say we should be like Germany or Spain, they’re the flavor of the month, but it takes a particularly narrow mind not to recognize that we need to become as good as england first before we can get anywhere close to the elites of the world.
England it’s what we’ve been trying to become for the last few decades without success I’m sure your “we should be like “Germany ” plan will be a little more complicated than that.
@plato
you’re acting like there’s some pre-defined levels ussf has to go through before we’re a world power–as if we have to master england’s system, then france’s system, then brasil, then germany.
if we are trying to emulate germany, there’s no requirement that we first emulate england, or any other better team.
The notion that the England leagues / clubs don’t develop players is a knee slapping joke.
Many of the worlds best players developed their skills there. Just because many of those players don’t play for the England national team doesn’t change that fact.