Niko Sigur

[InglewoodJack]

3 minutes ago, archer21 said:

You’re doing a lot of arguing considering basically everyone is agreeing with you that he very likely won’t ever play for us. There’s a small chance that for whatever reason, Croatia doesn’t call him for a long time and he decides to choose Canada. Look at a guy like Arfield, he couldn’t get into the Scotland team and was a clear starter for us (prime Arfield would still be a starter for us). It’s not completely out of the realm of possibility. But again, yes, that’s like a 1% chance of happening, I don’t think anyone is arguing that he’s probably gonna play for canada.

If we didn't do this, we'd have no posts on this board at all

[Footyeh]

6 hours ago, InglewoodJack said:

What do you think the gap between being not good enough for Croatia but being good enough for us looks like? If he's an RB, it'll be tough for him to crack our lineup unless he's very good, which if he is, he'll be playing for Croatia. If he's a CM and he's as good as Eustaquio or Kone, he'll play for Croatia- if he pans out as like our third best CM, that's pretty much a career MLS player, I guess he can be like a Zac McGraw type B team call up which is fine, but can't imagine a world where he's simultaneously good and plays for us. It's not like Portugal where Eustaquio didn't make their team, but was still playing for some okayish first div portuguese teams which is good enough for Canada. I think the margin is a lot thinner between us and Croatia (not that we're at their level, they just call in a ton of players from a ton of good leagues).

 

 

Larger than you probably think.  Even the 2nd choice player's in Croatia are very good compared to our options.  Eustaquio and Kone don't make a Croatia squad imho.  

[sebdeserio]

14 minutes ago, Footyeh said:

Larger than you probably think.  Even the 2nd choice player's in Croatia are very good compared to our options.  Eustaquio and Kone don't make a Croatia squad imho.  

For the Nations League Croatia called up Luka Ivanusec, a 24 year old centre mid who plays for Zagreb and Lovro Majer a 25 year old playing for Rennes rumoured to go to Wolfsburg. I'd say Eustaquio and Majer are around the same level but even if you think Majer is clear there's no way Ivanusec would get called up ahead of him, other than having an unofficial quota from the domestic league. 

Edited August 15, 2023 by sebdeserio

[Bigandy]

15 hours ago, InglewoodJack said:

My point is he won't play for us because he wants to play for Croatia. In the event that he was on the fence, I don't think Herdman's comments and all the other BS around the Croatia-Canada rivalry (if you can call it that) are going to encourage him that we're a worthy choice to consider instead of just waiting to play for Croatia whenever that day comes.

 

I agree with everything except the impact of herdmans comments. Deciding your dreams based on one "locker room" comment that youve heard hundreds of times (just not directly to the media) that happened 4+ years ago, seems incredibly near sighted and incredibly rigid in ones thinking. 

Herdman is known for his motivational skills. Surely he can say something more powerful (while using ammunition like getting minutes, WC appearance's etc.) to convince sigur that 1 comment 4+ years ago is not enough to shut the door on an incredible sporting opportunity.  

People change, people grow and holding grudges to the point of self detriment over an event that sigur was not even directly involved in is just shallow and IMO not a realistic way of viewing the world. Sigur will choose based on a variety of reasons but if his tipping point is herdmans comments, then he lacks any sort of emotional intelligence and also wouldnt be acting in his own self interest. I have faith that the kid is better than that. 

[Olympique_de_Marseille]

Called up by Croatia U21 for September:

https://hns-cff.hr/news/26831/dragan-skocic-objavio-popis-igraca-za-farske-otoke/

[InglewoodJack]

Now that we’ve rid ourselves of Croatia’s public enemy #1… Sigur coming home when?

[toontownman]

Mitrovic?

[Footyeh]

Signed for same agency that has Corbeanu and Koleosho among other Canadians.  

 

 

Edited September 1, 2023 by Footyeh

[costarg]

18 hours ago, Footyeh said:

Signed for same agency that has Corbeanu and Koleosho among other Canadians.  

 

 

 

[Olympique_de_Marseille]

Has now played a competitive youth match (U21) for Croatia so he would need to file a one time switch to play for Canada:

https://www.uefa.com/under21/match/2037464--faroe-islands-vs-croatia/lineups/

[InglewoodJack]

Wow, they’ve got him starting in midfield for the U21s. What a sharp rise. 
 

[CanadaFan123]

I met someone involved with him and he believes he will play for Canada as he won’t be good enough for Croatia. Obvious but nonetheless. 

[Atlantic]

This guy was playing USports and L1O reserves just two years and is now provisionally cap-tied to a very good footballing nation. I’m not sure what that exactly means for how we identify and view talent in this country but suffice to say he slipped through the cracks 

[phresh]

21 minutes ago, Olympique_de_Marseille said:

Has now played a competitive youth match (U21) for Croatia so he would need to file a one time switch to play for Canada:

https://www.uefa.com/under21/match/2037464--faroe-islands-vs-croatia/lineups/

He played for them at the last U21 Euros

[yomurphy1]

6 minutes ago, Atlantic said:

This guy was playing USports and L1O reserves just two years and is now provisionally cap-tied to a very good footballing nation. I’m not sure what that exactly means for how we identify and view talent in this country but suffice to say he slipped through the cracks 

Umm, I'm not sure. 

I think hindsight bias is prevalent when we look at these things and there's different growth rates for players and often luck at play. 

Like can anyone say they saw him at York and thought "wow this guy is head and shoulders above the competition"? 

[Olympique_de_Marseille]

10 minutes ago, phresh said:

He played for them at the last U21 Euros

Yes! I forgot. My bad.

[Macksam]

15 minutes ago, Atlantic said:

This guy was playing USports and L1O reserves just two years and is now provisionally cap-tied to a very good footballing nation. I’m not sure what that exactly means for how we identify and view talent in this country but suffice to say he slipped through the cracks 

I'm just waiting for the obligatory..."Great stuff!!! He can develop on *insert country*'s youth team before playing for our senior team! Win win!"

 

[VinceA]

I will say, if we had a U20 camp and called in a guy playing for the York Lions the coaching staff would have been roasted over the coals on this forum.

I've seen some on Twitter be like "blargh we lost another one bad Canada Soccer Bad" but like his development path didn't scream "cap me now" and especially now where even guys playing in the NCAA getting called into youth teams over guys already playing professionally will raise some eyebrows.

I don't really know if I would have done anything differently if I was in charge of the U20 pool. Now of course I'd try to convince him to join the program now, but I wouldn't have tripped over myself trying to get him to commit when he was in the U Sports system, which he was until only recently.

Edited September 13, 2023 by VinceA

[Bison44]

The thing that bugs me is someone saw something in him.  Someone on Slovenia thought he showed enough to bring him over and take a chance on him.  Or at least they were able to coax it out of him very quickly in Slovenia/Croatia with prob better coaching than he was getting at York U and Vaughn L1O.  I suppose we'll always have these stories of so and so ignored in CPL open trials, so and so played in Usports/L1O and no one wanted him etc and they go on to be guys we could have used in the CMNT.  But I wonder if Y9 or Valour had signed these guys at 19 would they have turned into what they are now, or would the subpar coaching/enviroment held them back??  

Which bring me to the shit on the CPL crowd.  If these kids cant get a sniff from the 3MLS teams, end up passed by CPL, not real successful in Usports or Div 3 (L1O), but go overseas and blossom, it just reinforces the need for a bigger stronger sturdier base to our pyramid.  More clubs ie more coaches/scouting beating the buses for these kids, plus better coaching and development once they reach a team.  We have a terrible log jam, choke point at the top of MLS academies, more than ever we need a strong well coached pool of kids coming through CPL (that couldnt make MLS academies), and a even deeper pool of L1 regionals feeding the CPL with whatever they can filter out of the rest of the talent that isnt ID'd at 17-18.  Hopefully the CPL can keep going long enough for it to really start to make a difference.  

[VinceA]

45 minutes ago, Bison44 said:

The thing that bugs me is someone saw something in him.  Someone on Slovenia thought he showed enough to bring him over and take a chance on him.  Or at least they were able to coax it out of him very quickly in Slovenia/Croatia with prob better coaching than he was getting at York U and Vaughn L1O.  I suppose we'll always have these stories of so and so ignored in CPL open trials, so and so played in Usports/L1O and no one wanted him etc and they go on to be guys we could have used in the CMNT.  But I wonder if Y9 or Valour had signed these guys at 19 would they have turned into what they are now, or would the subpar coaching/enviroment held them back??  

Which bring me to the shit on the CPL crowd.  If these kids cant get a sniff from the 3MLS teams, end up passed by CPL, not real successful in Usports or Div 3 (L1O), but go overseas and blossom, it just reinforces the need for a bigger stronger sturdier base to our pyramid.  More clubs ie more coaches/scouting beating the buses for these kids, plus better coaching and development once they reach a team.  We have a terrible log jam, choke point at the top of MLS academies, more than ever we need a strong well coached pool of kids coming through CPL (that couldnt make MLS academies), and a even deeper pool of L1 regionals feeding the CPL with whatever they can filter out of the rest of the talent that isnt ID'd at 17-18.  Hopefully the CPL can keep going long enough for it to really start to make a difference.  

People losing it on CSB on the CanadaSoccer subreddit (which is quickly turning into a USMNT social media style hellhole) because the CSA are pulling out of the Pan American Games due to financial issues. Like they immediately default to its all on CSB and CPL instead of Canada Soccer's own incompetence on securing funding and scaling their operation properly once both programs started winning more.

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

Well given their incompetence was in agreeing to a fixed annual payment from CSB out to 2037 regardless of changing circumstances I'm not sure where you are going with that.

[InglewoodJack]

1 hour ago, Bison44 said:

The thing that bugs me is someone saw something in him.  Someone on Slovenia thought he showed enough to bring him over and take a chance on him.  Or at least they were able to coax it out of him very quickly in Slovenia/Croatia with prob better coaching than he was getting at York U and Vaughn L1O.  I suppose we'll always have these stories of so and so ignored in CPL open trials, so and so played in Usports/L1O and no one wanted him etc and they go on to be guys we could have used in the CMNT.  But I wonder if Y9 or Valour had signed these guys at 19 would they have turned into what they are now, or would the subpar coaching/enviroment held them back??  

Which bring me to the shit on the CPL crowd.  If these kids cant get a sniff from the 3MLS teams, end up passed by CPL, not real successful in Usports or Div 3 (L1O), but go overseas and blossom, it just reinforces the need for a bigger stronger sturdier base to our pyramid.  More clubs ie more coaches/scouting beating the buses for these kids, plus better coaching and development once they reach a team.  We have a terrible log jam, choke point at the top of MLS academies, more than ever we need a strong well coached pool of kids coming through CPL (that couldnt make MLS academies), and a even deeper pool of L1 regionals feeding the CPL with whatever they can filter out of the rest of the talent that isnt ID'd at 17-18.  Hopefully the CPL can keep going long enough for it to really start to make a difference.  

Playing in Slovenia isn't all that high of a level though. As much as we know, it could be a case of a 19 year old kid getting the chance to push back his studies and go hang out in a European country for a year just like kids who go bum around Europe working in hostels or being nannies. Even if he did join on to a CPL team instead of going to University- and per his resume it didn't look like he was a top prospect at the time- there's no saying if that would've led him to Canada either. Two of the best Canadian CPL exports- Abzi and Farsi- don't seem particularly interested in playing for Canada at the moment.

I don't disagree with your overall point in that we need a sturdier pyramid and more competitive teams to catch players and develop them, but based on everything we know about this kid this is just an anomaly. You're not supposed to go from York U to the Croatian U21 team within a year. By all accounts, this was a kid who wasn't good enough, then took advantage of an opportunity, that opened up an opportunity at Split, an injury put him in the starting lineup, he took advantage of that opportunity, then got called up to their national team, took advantage of that opp too and kept moving along. This type of thing would happen even if we had a fully developed soccer pyramid. On the other hand, a player like Stefan Mitrovic who got passed up by all CPL teams and wasn't rated by TFC academy is a player we should not have whiffed on. That's a failure of our talent scouting.

[to70]

It's interesting to hear how he actually got discovered by Hajduk . Was talking to a customer who usedto play OSL soccer and asked him if he still played. He said that he just plays pick-up soccer with a bunch of guys. turns that Niko played with them in Mississauga and one in the group was Tomislav Zadro who played for the Wisconsin Badgers and was a high MLS prospect, but was seriously injured in his last year there. He is the one that recommended Niko to Hajduk. Radomlje, the team in Slovenia is Hajduk's farm team.

[toontownman]

2 hours ago, Bison44 said:

The thing that bugs me is someone saw something in him.  Someone on Slovenia thought he showed enough to bring him over and take a chance on him.  Or at least they were able to coax it out of him very quickly in Slovenia/Croatia with prob better coaching than he was getting at York U and Vaughn L1O.  I suppose we'll always have these stories of so and so ignored in CPL open trials, so and so played in Usports/L1O and no one wanted him etc and they go on to be guys we could have used in the CMNT.  But I wonder if Y9 or Valour had signed these guys at 19 would they have turned into what they are now, or would the subpar coaching/enviroment held them back??  

Which bring me to the shit on the CPL crowd.  If these kids cant get a sniff from the 3MLS teams, end up passed by CPL, not real successful in Usports or Div 3 (L1O), but go overseas and blossom, it just reinforces the need for a bigger stronger sturdier base to our pyramid.  More clubs ie more coaches/scouting beating the buses for these kids, plus better coaching and development once they reach a team.  We have a terrible log jam, choke point at the top of MLS academies, more than ever we need a strong well coached pool of kids coming through CPL (that couldnt make MLS academies), and a even deeper pool of L1 regionals feeding the CPL with whatever they can filter out of the rest of the talent that isnt ID'd at 17-18.  Hopefully the CPL can keep going long enough for it to really start to make a difference.  

It is coming but in the most predictably slow, fraught in politics kind of way. 

Fingers crossed we have coast to coast L1 in 2024 that can naturally create a div 2 after 2026/27

Glass half full.. we are creating more and more professional environments and levels for players so less will fall through the cracks or will have somewhere to fall back to if they leave Canada. There are always going to be players that are late unexpected bloomers, are dead serious on moving away or just get missed. We are in an infinitely better place in this country than 5 years ago though.

[Kadenge]

1 hour ago, to70 said:

It's interesting to hear how he actually got discovered by Hajduk . Was talking to a customer who usedto play OSL soccer and asked him if he still played. He said that he just plays pick-up soccer with a bunch of guys. turns that Niko played with them in Mississauga and one in the group was Tomislav Zadro who played for the Wisconsin Badgers and was a high MLS prospect, but was seriously injured in his last year there. He is the one that recommended Niko to Hajduk. Radomlje, the team in Slovenia is Hajduk's farm team.

 Zadro obviously saw something in Niko to recommend him to a team like Hajduk. Which seems to come back to scouting/evaluation in Canada? I get it's impossible to spot every player that goes on to develop well in other countries but hopefully the CPL serves as another filter for young talent in Canada