A promising young talent has reportedly switched his allegiance to the United States.
Cole Campbell’s one-time switch from Iceland to the United States has been approved by FIFA, ESPN reported Thursday. Campbell, who turned 18-years-old in February, is currently playing with Borussia Dortmund’s Under-19 squad.
He signed with Dortmund ahead of the 2022-23 season and has totaled three goals and nine assists across 22 appearances this campaign. In total, Campbell has featured for Dortmund’s U-19 and U-17 teams since his move to Germany.
The son of former Iceland women’s national team player Rakel Karvelsson, Campbell featured in Atlanta United’s academy before moving to Europe. He made six appearances for Icelandic side FH Hafnarfjordur, as well as one appearance for Breidablik.
Campbell made seven appearances for Iceland’s U-17 side, scoring two goals. He becomes the latest dual-national to make the switch to the United States in recent time, joining Folarin Balogun, Timothy Tillman, and Kristoffer Lund in recent years.
Campbell’s next club match is on Sunday against Cologne’s U-19 side.
In searching for footage of Campbell I did discover they do have a A-Junioren highlight show on YouTube each week. Conveniently label on the timeline so you can skip around. You could also find dual nat Kaan Inanoglu who plays for Duisburg 7th in the league with 10g, although he has been playing more with their first team in the 3Bundesliga lately.
– Terzic doesn’t mind playing young kids. Duranville got his debut last year in the final week when they were trying to win the league. But German teen Paris Brunner the likely first choice off Cole’s team. Paris was a huge part of their U17 WC run and has 16g for BvB U19s.
He is just 18. He plays against 18 y.os. when he has success against adults, color me interested.
of course the US goes wing shopping at dortmund’s, the team’s preferred wing provider. kid looks like a baller to me. foot speed, can dribble, and for a change can put shots in the corner of the net. is a productive kid for an excellent U19 team. his skillset will jump him ahead of esmir, zendejas, cowell, and he should be a dark horse with paredes for the backup wing slots.
i’d be fast tracking this kid to the copa team but my bet is given he’s age group for dortmund maybe he goes to the olympics. he is that good.
I went and looked and he does look pretty durn good. Not saying he’s in the same stratosphere but he kind of reminds me of Cristiano Ronaldo with that upright dribbling style and two-steps-to-top-speed type acceleration he was showing. Always looked like he was under control even when he was dribbling past people and leaving them pulling up their shorts.
Although, as far as I can tell he has exactly 0 competitive minutes played against real live adult human professionals. So, let’s put him with the u23s and see how he does up an age group first. It’s always good to have more options, of course.
Oh, for sure. He’s definitely far more in the “prospect” than “game-ready product” category right now. But the potential surely looks intriguing.
Against that, though, there’s Dortmund, not exactly the easiest roster to break into. And Terzic. Who has not exactly inspired anyone with his young-player development. (Or any aspect of coaching, actually.)
You all know this has nothing to do with evaluating the kids talent. The IV (who I’m sure had no idea who this kid was 48 hrs ago) put that comment there to set up years of comments.
– If Campbell hits “I was the first one in on this kid, no one else believed in him but me.”
– If Campbell hits 5 years from now “Why didn’t we give him a chance 5 years ago when I wanted him on the Copa roster”
– If he gets a callup and stinks “finally someone listen to me that we should cap everyone, now we know he stinks and should never ever cap him again even if he plays for Manchester City and leads the PL in goals that’s just false club narrative you fanboys.”
– or IV’s preferred he never gets called up and never plays above third division “you fanboys want to callup the same big club guys when the key is starting a 3rd division journeyman who has never had double digit goals or assists even in the Serbian 2nd division that guy will finally help us beat Brazil”
JR: watch the flipping tape. kid. can. play. you would watch reyna 17 or 18 and he could play too. the U19 bit matters if you what you do doesn’t scale up to adult ball.
the problem with your skeptical approach is you are like ignoring what your eyes say and instead waiting on the approval of someone else. and yeah, as you suggest, dortmund is a hard team to break into. so if we wait on dortmund it could be a while. i remember having similar conversations on green, richards, and reyna, where folks like you mocked “age group.” you realize green, donovan, and pulisic were all more or less age group kids when they first got rolling as senior team players?
i mean, the good age group kids in germany could probably start in a lot of leagues like MLS or even some of the “he plays in europe” stuff like holland that people tout our players from. you folks need to learn how to watch tape and see talent. 19 year old opponents or not, how many people we have can dribble, cross, and shoot like that? exactly. that is the more accurate comparison. not “has he been approved by terzic.” if i wanted to get punchy, waiting on terzic is lazy scouting. you want your first division box score to analyze. by then everyone on this site will “see it.” the idea is to catch on faster than the ones reading box scores or touting first division minutes. since when did we have to wait on their first team head coach. why can’t we anticipate.
as i said, i fully expect him to be sandbagged down to U20 or U23 because “that’s what GB does.” did it with richards and miles and sargent and weah and everyone any thinks is good these days.
save the “not sure if it will scale up” for the players with games that have obvious holes. the freddy adu who can slowly hit a glorious pass but can’t play quickly, no foot speed, coca-cola attitude (hit pass and drinks a coke complimenting himself instead of making the next run), short, can’t handle pressure or physical contact, not interested in defending.
foot speed scales up. dribbling scales up. finishing scales up.
sorry but if you can’t see where he can do things most of the pool can’t, ball handles, shooting, accurate service, not my problem.
i do agree he may have a “dortmund problem” but be honest, a couple of our best players did/do.
to be more punchy, we never held it against pulisic how his club situation was (or even has been since, he’s always been a roller coaster — hence me saying let’s get off the roller coaster and just be long term objective). and when GB weighed in on the reyna roller coaster, same club, i think he was proven wrong. perhaps right on attitude but wrong on the lineup card. setting aside the ancient history of players like mcbride, twellman, and donovan being returned to sender by germany initially. if you remember landon was an age grouper there until he got loaned here and played NT. then magically bayer “gets it.”
surely the lesson by now should be grain of salt, or maybe consider the talent level in that league.
to be crystal clear, i wasn’t saying he should start. i am saying his skill set looks better than guys we have in the pool getting time off the bench or in B games. that should be enough to get you a look, and it would have before roughly klinsi second cycle, eg, green, morris. some reason klinsi second cycle became a club snob and we have been mired in this “lag club form” nonsense ever since.
i also think klinsi started this mentality where we can’t even spend so much as 3 or 4 slots of the 23 on trying things. historically the US would leave off some regulars for gold cup and bring in some experiments. only in recent years has this become where the NL team has to be the status quo first choice or else. this might help win NL. it is conservative in the context of everything else we have as a goal. it doesn’t help identify new helpful players who push this further forward to win bigger things.
i mean, people freak out if weah or pulisic is out. ok, maybe find someone else who can play wing too. and you know, who does? hmmm
but, yeah, he’ll be with the U23s just like weah and richards were gonna be age group until they were gonna be the starting lineup in WCQ. to me if they end up starters in 21 then either (a) you can’t scout in 19 or (b) a coach with a brain has them starting in 19 preparing for 21.
IV: First, you attributed a lot of things to me that I think came from Quozzel, I didn’t say anything about breaking in at BvB or Terzic. Two, he looks good, he’s got potential for sure. Have you seen him play a complete match because everyone looks great in highlights though? You could clip together highlights of Cowell, Pukstas, Esmir, or Luna and make them look just as good. Also take into account the U19 Bundesliga is regional so some of those are highlights are against 3rd or 4th division team youth academies that have very limited resources. Sorry, but if you can’t see the difference in physical, technical, pace of play, and mental development between guys like Richards, Weah, and others between age 18 and age 21 there’s not much else to say. Reyna and Pulisic are exceptions not the rule, there are very few players who can play against professional men at age 18. It’s fine to say this kid playing in the youth levels is going to be there soon. It’s a whole different thing to say let’s start playing this kid who hasn’t played 120 minutes of professional football against the world class talent on Brazil, Argentina, or Germany.
Just for comparison recent Americans in U19 Bundesliga
Zyen Jones 3g 2a 969 mins
Pulisic 6g 6a 1031 mins
McKennie 4g 4a 1800 mins
Wright 15g 12a 2450 mins
McKinzie Gaines 7g 9a 1900 mins
Julian Green 10g 6a 2400 mins
Will Pulisic 5 matches 4 clean sheets 0.20 GAA
Nick Taitgue 4g 7a 2000 mins
T Tillman 6g 5a 2300 min
M Tillman 13g 7a 1400 mins
This is really for IV, I guess, but can we all shut up about Green? He’s where he belongs. A solid contributor on a mediocre 2nd division team. If he were to move to MLS, which I can’t see making any sense for any MLS team with any ambition, he might be a solid squad player for a midtable team. That’s his level. If his level were somewhere else, he’d be somewhere else. Same with Wright, same with Moore. Same with a bunch of other guys whose names keep coming up for some reason as if they are great squandered or missed talents. They’re just not. They are where they are because that’s what they are.
Maybe this kid is great. But he’s 18 and dortmund don’t think he’s at a higher level than the regional u19s. I’d have more faith in a 15yo kid playing in NextPro than this at this stage. It’s a higher, more competitive level. If he makes it, great. It’s always nice to have more options. But the simple odds are he won’t because the vast majority of kids at his level, regardless of how “scalable” his skills look on YouTube, don’t. At this stage he has no better claim to a runout in the Copa than than a guy like Esmir who is actually starting and producing at a professional level at roughly the same age. Pointing to even our guys who made, Pulisic, etc has a huge selection bias. As JR has pointed out, we’ve also had to hear about a whole lot of guys who didn’t work out.
JR,
You know if not for IV, those of us SBI would know nothing about soccer.
For example all these years it was thought that BVB were pretty good about developing young players. Sancho said he took the leap to leave England and go there because he was inspired by Pulisic. But now we know
“i do agree he may have a “dortmund problem” but be honest, a couple of our best players did/do.”
All this from a guy who never learned how to punctuate.