Ulysses Llanez hasn’t featured much for Eredivisie side Heerenveen and reportedly could be on his way back to parent club Wolfsburg in the near future.
Llanez missed out through injury in Heerenveen’s 3-0 win over Feyenoord on Wednesday and looks to be on the outside of manager Johnny Jansen’s plans, Omrop Fryslan reported. The U.S. Men’s National Team winger was loaned to Heerenveen from Wolfsburg in September, but has struggled for any consistency in the Netherlands.
The 19-year-old has only totaled 103 minutes of action through six senior appearances at Heerenveen this season. Llanez suffered a minor injury not long after his arrival to Holland and recently missed time too due to reported food poisoning.
Llanez has yet to make his senior debut for Wolfsburg, but is one of the club’s top young talents after making the move from the L.A. Galaxy Academy. The American playmaker scored 11 goals and registered six assists in 16 combined appearances last season for Wolfsburg’s Under-19 team before he began training with the senior team.
Llanez’s loan at Heerenveen is set to run until June, but Wolfsburg could recall him early, especially if Jansen doesn’t need his services going forward.
The former U.S. Youth National Team star made three appearances for Gregg Berhalter’s side in 2020, scoring on his debut in a 1-0 friendly win over Costa Rica. He also played in November friendlies against Wales and Panama and should be part of the plans going forward with the USMNT set to participate in several competitions this year.
Heerenveen currently sits ninth in the Eredivisie table, 18 points out of the final European qualification spot and 14 points clear of the relegation zone.
The loan has not worked yet Uly looked good in camp in November makes you wonder what the problem is? My only concern is Wolfsburg refuses to play players under 23.
at some point maybe acknowledge that the problem may not be his, and that assuming club utility/form = talent, is lazy analysis and in x% of circumstances is wrong. soto moves to his next team and sets the world on fire, after being a dominant U20. sometimes the team screwing them over is wrong. sometimes we act like lampard understands our player and then sometimes lampard is fired within 2 years for somehow making chelsea worse despite a ton of offensive talent around. maybe “hannover” is wrong sometimes. particularly for NT purposes, the simple logic that if they played well in the shirt we should see them again in the shirt, is so easy it’s not funny.
also bears noting he was productive by the bushel for the wolfsburg U19s and so like soto his “problem” was not “how he played” but rather “how he sat.” at some point we need to start making distinctions between sitting players and sucking players. the “minutes” obsessives seem to neglect we have several good players who were productive youth and then do things in club WHEN PLAYED, but we’re going to pretend like picking up splinters is the same thing as playing poorly, because snobs want to reify club minutes and club coaches — some of whom will be gone next year — as more indicative of quality than how those minutes are actually used.
Trying to tie Uly’s situation with Wood isn’t accurate. Uly’s had one manager at Herenveen who doesn’t value him. Wood has been benched at Hamburg then at Hannover then again at Hamburg. He’s had multiple managers at those locations that have kept him primarily on the bench.