The Olympics Are Done, Now Prepare For Flying Kiwis Transfer Season
It was the 2019 U20 World Cup that tipped the scales for Bayern Munich in their long term monitoring of Sarpreet Singh, having been aware of him since he was an 11 year old touring Germany with an age grade team – imagine how long that list of transfer prospects is at a club like Bayern Munich. It was the same tournament that got Joe Bell in the attentions of Viking FK, specifically after his performance in a win over Norway. Viking were so keen on him that even after he chose to return for his last year of uni at Virginia they stayed in touch, sent a representative to watch him in the national tournament, and then eventually were able to secure his services after he graduated.
Bell scored in the NCAA final against Georgetown but it ended 3-3 and Virginia lost on penalties... although he did his bit scoring the first attempt for the Cavs. Bit of an unfortunate trend for Bellinho as that U20s WC team also lost on penalties, going down to Colombia in the round of 16, and now the OlyWhites have been dropped by Japan by the same method in the Olympic quarterfinals.
That’s the way these tournaments go but as the dust settles it’s pretty clear that those Olympic dudes have achieved something historic and vividly memorable. And quite frankly international achievements in football are cool but it’s at club level that the bread gets buttered... and it’s at club level where it becomes obvious how special this generation of players could become. Like, we’re used to having one amazing player at a time. Ryan Nelsen giving way to Winston Reid giving way to Chris Wood. But not sure we’re prepared for what may happen if this current crop keeps on progressing at the rate they have been. Because guess what? It’s just about Transfer Season, baby.
Ten members of that 2019 U20s team were involved in the 2021 OlyWhites and all ten of them are playing professionally either in the A-League or in Europe. Four more were in the 2019 U17 World Cup squad – two of them are at the Wellington Phoenix (Alex Paulsen & Ben Old) while two are playing at a high level overseason (Matt Garbett at Falkenbergs & Marko Stamenic at FC Copenhagen). That ain’t a coincidence. These tournaments are swarming with scouts, they’re all of a pretty strong standard that makes it easier to assess a player and they’re accessibly recorded by the FIFA folks. People are watching thus transfers will happen. It helps that they often fall inside transfer windows too.
Sure enough, rumours abound. Rumours don’t necessarily mean anything tangible but they do help build a profile around a player – ‘how to get a bloke linked to big teams in the papers’ is probably the first chapter of the Football Agent 101 textbook. In which case Matt Garbett’s agent is earning their percentage but pump the brakes on that situation for a second because if we’re talking about post-Olympics transfer possibilities then the major candidates are mostly from the Footy Ferns.
Erin Nayler is a free agent after a disappointing season with Reading in the WSL. Hannah Wilkinson just finished up a short stint with MSV Duisburg in the Bundesliga. Olivia Chance has said she plans to head back to Europe after a great stint with Brisbane Roar. Annalie Longo, Liz Anton, and Paige Satchell are unattached after W-League seasons too. Not Claudia Bunge though, she’s re-upped with Melbourne Victory. We’ll see how many others follow her example, the W-League has proved a great launching pad for Aussie players trying to get into England/America in particular and last season there was a real shift in Aotearoa representation in that comp... and that was without future W-League Hall of Famer (hypothetically) Rebekah Stott.
Emma Rolston has played pro in Germany before, she’s back on the scene after injury. Daisy Cleverley, Anna Leat, and Gabi Rennie are at uni in America – Cleverley is doing post-grads so she’s closest to going pro of that group. Anna Green and Mickey Robertson are presumably awaiting a Wellington Phoenix women’s team which could happen by next season and would explode the numbers of kiwis getting their W-League chops (which is starting in November so a bit of news on that front wouldn’t go astray). Marisa van der Meer too. Not to mention players from outside that Olympic group, Katie Rood for example.
That’s fourteen players from a team of 22 who could conceivably pop up on your next twitter refresh posing with a scarf or a pen and paper. The Women’s Super League in England is about a month away from its opening weekend so there’s a little more room to manoeuvre there compared to the men’s division - and there is a New Zealander in charge of West Ham now remember, old mate Oli Harder (who has already signed Tameka Yallop and she’s an honorary kiwi by marriage). Same deal with the German, French, Spanish, Italian leagues etc. The WSL Championship’s pretty competitive too as Meikayla Moore could attest. The American and a few of the Scandinavian leagues are past the halfway point of their terms so it’s a different timeline there... but that could suit anyone keen for a few months of rest after the Olympics. It could definitely be the case that the Welly Nix Women are the first domino that a few players are waiting to see fall. Sooner there’s clarity on that, the sooner we launch full blast into Flying Kiwis Transfer Season.
Because it’s coming, don’t you worry your pretty little head about that. The ladies don’t get the same circus act surrounding those transfers as the fellas do, with all the rumours and the random opinions and the constant churn of content, but there are a heap of candidates there for curious and exciting next steps in their careers.
But if it’s circus acts that you want, let us get to those fellas now. Starting with a guy who wasn’t even gonna be in the initial 18-man squad - he was only a travelling reserve until they expanded the squads and then he ended up starting the last two matches...
Whaaaaat is going on there? Okay then. Also, yes while it may be from The S*n it was still more coherent than what the Express had to offer along the same lines...
“Lastly, Brentford and Watford are amongst a list of clubs to have watched New Zealand's 19-year-old left-back Matthew Garbett at the Games, as the All Blacks reached the quarter-finals before losing on penalties to Japan. He currently plays for Falkenbergs in the second tier of Swedish football having been picked up at the Under-17s World Cup in 2019.”
Not a left-back. And the team ain’t called the All Blacks.
Anyway, remember that point about agents getting a player’s name mentioned in the papers? Matt Garbett has been repped by New Era Global Sports for a couple years now, an English based agency that seems to have a number of clients from clubs like Everton and Newcastle as well as an abundance of players in the divisions below. Only one Watford played and nobody from Brentford or Crystal Palace according to their website (and assuming that’s up to date) so the origin of their interest is unknown other than those three clubs being ones whose recruitment is most likely to overlap with a player like Garbs. But yeah these rumours popping up in the papers at a time when Garbett’s in focus at the Olympics is not a coincidence. As for the bombastic rumour approach... let’s just say this isn’t the first time they’ve slapped that card on the table.
There are three candidates for where any transfer rumour stems from (and they always stem from somewhere, there’s always a motive): a player/their agent, a club, or the media. The club could be the one trying to sign or the one trying to sell. If it originates from the media then it’s made up, pure and simple. However these things do get spoken into manifestation sometimes. Starts as a made up thing but ends up very real. In this case though it’s very obviously the agent trying to hype a man up.
Swedish site GP have an article up in response to this yarn in which they talk to Håkan Nilsson, the Falkenbergs sporting director. This is what he had to say...
“I say nothing. These are rumours. I can't say anything. Nothing has come to our attention. I do not know if there has been a whole lot of interest. I have not heard anything more than the rumours.”
Garbett’s contract with FFF lasts until the end of 2022. Will he still be there by then, Mr Nilsson?
“Lol! I have no idea. Should any of these rumours you refer to be true and any of those clubs come to Falkenberg and want to buy Matthew Garbett then we won’t still have him.”
It’s the use of the word ‘lol’ that’s most evocative there.
That doesn’t mean Brentford won’t make that approach though, they can get a pretty solid character witness from their recent loanee Winston Reid if they need one. Brentford has strong Danish links (part of why they loaned Reid). Scandi solidarity could do us a solid there. Meanwhile Crystal Palace are at the start of a youth revolution under Patrick Vieira which could be a disaster or it could be a triumph and it could also be an open window for someone like Matt Garbett to sneak through. As for Watford, they’re owned by the Pozzo family of Italy – who also own Granada and Udinese. That gets a tad shady with players sold between those three clubs but they do usually have an interesting transfer approach. Most likely there’s not much in all this... but the more Garbett is randomly linked with English clubs (note that Garbett was born in England so the passport side of things is no dramas) the more likely it is that someone will bite.
Joe Bell on the other hand... he starts every week for a midtable team in Norway’s top division and was an absolute standout at the Olympics, playing every minute (compared to Garbett who was very good in a smaller role but is in and out of the Falkenbergs team in the second tier of Swedish footy). If you’re starting every week for a top division club in Europe aged under 24 then suffice it to say that all the scouts worth a damn already know who you are. Football Manager databases take care of that business with a ten second search. Hence rumours of top Championship teams and even possibly middling Premier League clubs being keen on what he offers hit a more harmonious note with reality.
An article on Stavanger Aftenblad appears to have corroborated those rumours, with the journo who wrote the piece adding that they’d be talking something in the range of €8-10m for a fee if he were to leave. That would be the second largest fee ever commanded by a New Zealander after Chris Wood’s move to Burnley (reportedly £16m). Bell was also born in England which takes care of the logistics. You’d imagine it’s not only English clubs looking at him though.
It’s definitely not only English clubs when it comes to Liberato Cacace. The man himself confirmed that there was communication from Juventus while a couple Spanish club suitors have been mentioned in the past as well. Napoli is the dream move for Libby, who knows if that may happen one day. It’d be absolutely massive if it did. But the same thing applies to Cacace as does for Bell and more: Cacace is a regular starter in the Belgian top flight which is a top ten league in Europe. Scouts are watching. We already know that. They still would be even if we didn’t. And you can already get a jump start of the LIBERATO CACACE | WELCOME TO ___ youtube compo vids starting with this banger of a clip right here...
Don’t forget the inane techno soundtrack.
Those are the three guys who feel most poised for a move. You never know when a hefty transfer might come along, Sarpreet Singh and Libby Cacace can both tell you all about how sudden those things can happen, but as it stands that’s the goss. Cacace’s arguably another year of strong performances away from moving on from Sint Truiden but they are a selling club. Their Japanese owners like to use STVV as a foothold in Europe for Japanese players and are very much of the buy low sell high mentality. You may recall a lad named Takehiro Tomiyasu from the OlyWhites came vs Japan. STVV bought him for €800k and two years later sold him to Bologna for €7m. Now he’s on the verge of a move to Tottenham.
That’s how STVV operate and they would have signed Cacace – for a fee similar to the initial Tomiyasu one – with the idea that there was a good chance they could make a profit off him down the line. Compared to Bayern Munich buying Sarpreet Singh for something close to that amount where they’d be happy to let him go for a free if it came to that because they really honestly do not need the money. They’re merely out here taking wild punts on players in the hope that, from a large group of prospects, a couple of them might prove good enough for their first team someday.
You don’t need to move clubs to progress your career. Marko Stamenic was late to arrive in Tokyo because he was in Austria on tour with the FC Copenhagen first team. He played once for them last season and seems poised to play a good chunk more next time if that’s anything to go by. Nando Pijnaker has had to settle for reserve team footy at Rio Ave to date while George Stanger did get a few Scottish Premiership games under his belt last term for Hamilton Academical... both those clubs have been relegated so first team spots could be a little easier to access for those two now.
Ben Waine re-signed with the Phoenix rejecting interest from Coventry City in favour of more first team games. Gianni Stensness was superb in Tokyo and we’ve seen worse players than him make the jump to Europe from A-League clubs. Michael Woud will have promotion as the number one target for Willem II this season after missing out in the playoffs a few months back. Callum McCowatt and Eli Just play all the time for an upwardly mobile FC Helsingor team in the Danish second tier (and hopefully a fit-again Dalton Wilkins will join them more often too).
The whole scene is absolutely nuts. Flying Kiwis Transfer Seasons have been surging for a couple years now but there’s a chance, only a chance mind you, that the next month or two could be pure madness.
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