Tyler Boyd was aiming to have a breakout second season for Turkish side Besiktas, but now will reportedly have to wait until 2021 to feature for the club.
Due to roster rules, Besiktas had to remove four foreign players from eligibility until January, several Turkish outlets stated Wednesday. Boyd was one of four players who did not receive a spot in the squad, joining Dutch striker Jeremain Lens, Brazilian defender Douglas, and French defender Nicolas Isimat-Mirin.
All four players will be allowed to continue training at the team’s facilities, but cannot feature in matches until the start of the new year. Boyd will still earn roughly $1.5 million from Besiktas despite not being able to play in the next two-and-a-half months.
News of the Besiktas roster mess comes less than a month after Besiktas made a serious inquiry about acquiring USMNT defender DeAndre Yedlin on loan from Newcastle United. Sources tell SBI that any potential Besiktas deal was contingent on the club being able to sell its surplus of foreign players, including Boyd, but Besiktas failed in its attempt to unload the surplus.
Boyd made six appearances for the club in all competitions this season, featuring in both UEFA Champions and Europa League qualifying. Boyd’s only goal came in a 3-1 win over Trabzonspor back on Sept. 13th, and overall he totaled 447 minutes of action this season.
The 25-year-old made the move to Besiktas in July 2019 and jumped right into the first team squad. Boyd appeared in 25 matches for the club, scoring two goals and registering one assist.
Boyd made a one-time switch to the U.S. Men’s National Team in 2019 and has become a regular addition in Gregg Berhlater’s squad when healthy. He’s earned seven caps to date for the USMNT, scoring two goals in the 2019 Concacaf Gold Cup.
Boyd might not have to wait until January to see action again. With the USMNT expected to play friendlies in Europe in November, Gregg Berhalter would likely include Boyd in order to give the winger some potential playing time and training time.
Sounds like Wales is still the opponent for one of the Euro friendlies in November. My guess is that with the tight friendly window in front of the Nations League matches, the second opponent will likely be either an African or Asian team.
If you see my post below New Zealand is playing in London the day or day after we would possibly play Wales. It would make sense to play them but I don’t think I’ve seen that rumored yet.
Read a tweet somewhere today that New Zealand is the likely other team, so maybe I had heard that somewhere. It does make sense though.
get a loan. does them no good sitting around and let’s be blunt, if they have too many foreign players now that probably is no better in 3 months. they can of course sell or lend people and make you room, but the implication of being left off is you weren’t one of the favored children. so i wouldn’t expect them to move the others for you. i would expect you would be the shuffled one. or you would be on the roster now under their quota. so get a loan so you’re getting minutes and also working on Plan B when the other shoe drops.
If you read the article you’ll notice Bestikas was trying to unload Boyd several other international players to get under the mark but couldn’t. Not to mention the window is closed so even if someone showed interest they couldn’t move him. I saw no reporting that domestic moves are still open as in England, even if Turkey is the same EPL teams can only transfer with lower clubs so a loan to Turkish 2nd Division probably not worth it.
if you wanted a game to “stick” you would have to get creative. play someone like guam or puerto rico that is technically domestic for immigration but counts as another team so it’s a friendly. they can’t bar us for covid then. or you do a player-coached game with the european players who are already in on passports and visas. otherwise europe is not letting us in for covid and soccer is not an exception. even if we could make a team there, we probably can’t get coaches and staff in. and to me these days we are nutty control freaks who would never let the team show up unsupervised, select a lineup, and maybe play an unauthorized formation that works god forbid. but if you wanted a game bad enough, you name a senior player as player-coach, name a team of EU-legal players, and play an EU team. and even then covid is spiking there and god knows if that makes sense. so to me it’s play puerto rico if you want a game. unless we lock down no one would tell us no. do we want a game or not. if we have to have a game with france coached by berhalter that’s probably not happening.
fwiw nothing is stopping you from holding a camp without a game and/or picking up a scrimmage. they held a camp with no game roughly this time last year prepping for canada game 2 with the eliminated players.
MLS was the problem with the October camp. MLS knew they were losing most of their foreign players for the month but they had no ability to stop it. If they’d had to let 23-30 Americans go as well you’d have basically the B teams racing for the playoffs. Goff with Washington Post still reporting Nov in the UK is on but not finalized.
“Individuals arriving in the UK from outside the current travel corridor (see below for each country’s rules) must self-isolate for 14 days and may be contacted to verify compliance. You will need to self-isolate if you visited or made a transit stop in a country or territory that is not on the travel corridor list in the 14 days before you arrive in the UK.” we are not on the “good boy” list, for obvious reasons. so domestic players and coaches would face 14 day quarantine, even if UK/EU based might not. like i said, the only scenarios i see working there are either special dispensation or a coachless team of euro based. or GB and staff go weeks early and sit in a hotel at least 2 weeks before heading out to camp. or you play USVI and PR or other domestic territories. europe won’t let us in if we’re not already passported or visa’d.
Staff would arrive early and it would be all Euro based anyway because of MLS playoffs running at the same time. We aren’t having a coach less team or playing Guam.
btw the UK is spiking on cases. we are being desperate rather than rational.
Actually I think they are just trying to fulfill the agreement with Wales from March. Then the 2nd match in the UK makes sense because you aren’t adding another country of travel. The UKs numbers are pretty middle of the road compared to US, much better than Guam by the way.
My guess would be a match with New Zealand after the proposed Nov. 11 with Wales since they play England on Nov. 12. Of course it’s Covid dependent but your option really doesn’t work on most levels. Including there is no way Guam would play the US and there would be no point. They’re 199 out of 210. Where would the US play PR? MLS has the playoffs and Euro players would have to quarantine for two weeks upon return from NA.