Him & Sarr. Trojans.
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Player Mohammed Kudus
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I love Eze but it does feel like we need a player more like Maddison who can play that final ball and break lines often. We can't be over-reliant on Cuti for that.
Not saying Eze can't do it but it's not his biggest strength, he's more of a dribbler. And if we get Savio we'll need to balance it out.
He's something. Was he this good at West ham. If so let's get that Paqueta bloke .
It was days ago people wanted Sarr sold. I don't get what people are watching
We needed a 6 who can pass. Or at least a Bentancur replacement who can pass.
What Kudus needs is really clearly someone else who can share the load of being our outlet so he gets a chance to run beyond them sometimes.
A winger-striker hybrid that can actually play both. Where have you been?
He is already unmatched among the wingers of this team in terms of his ability to use his body as a shield to keep the ball away. Add to that his agility and decent strength for his size, and he’s head and shoulders above anybody else in his position, and possibly in the entire frontline at the moment.
Certainly one of the first names on the team sheet going forward.
He is already unmatched among the wingers of this team in terms of his ability to use his body as a shield to keep the ball away. Add to that his agility and decent strength for his size, and he’s head and shoulders above anybody else in his position, and possibly in the entire frontline at the moment.
Certainly one of the first names on the team sheet going forward.
I already like watching this guy
and dj specially in the first have
hes a physical beast, there was a few frustrating pieces where he has passes etc and made the wrong decision at certain times, but overall hes an absolute asset. frank can get the frustrating pieces ironed out of his game and turn him into a worldy.
to be fair ther frustrating pieces were more when he was central, when hes out wide the options are more limited so its more straight forward.
to be fair ther frustrating pieces were more when he was central, when hes out wide the options are more limited so its more straight forward.
Outstanding tonight. He’s got that devilment in him to go with his great ability. He’ll be a great player for us
He creates something from absolutely nothing and battles for everything. Dare I say it, almost reminds me of Bale for Wales and that AVB team where he was running the entire show without even having a winger opposite him.
End product obviously nowhere close to Bale’s but if it was we’d never be able to afford him.
Raw materials of a star here
End product obviously nowhere close to Bale’s but if it was we’d never be able to afford him.
Raw materials of a star here
Tottenham’s Mohammed Kudus and the realisation of a dream: ‘You just have to let him play’
The key to Spurs getting the best from their new Ghanaian forward could be his relationship with head coach Thomas Frank...
www.nytimes.com
Tottenham’s Mohammed Kudus and the realisation of a dream: ‘You just have to let him play’
Elias Burke
As the standout in a talented crop, Tottenham Hotspur’s £55million new signing Mohammed Kudus had been earmarked for stardom long before he left his native Ghana to play in Europe. And he has long dreamt of being part of occasions like tonight, when he and his new club will face European champions Paris Saint-Germain in the UEFA Super Cup. He is unlikely to be overawed.
“I first became aware of Kudus when I watched him train in Ghana in 2016 among the 1999-to-2001-born players — he was 16 years old and his talent was obvious,” Flemming Pedersen, technical director of Danish club FC Nordsjaelland and the Ghana-based Right to Dream academy, tells The Athletic. “He always stood out. He had extra physical and technical qualities.”
Plucked from Strong Tower, an amateur club in Ghana’s capital city Accra, Kudus was 12 years old when he joined Right to Dream, the free-of-charge residential talent factory established by former Manchester United scout Tom Vernon that has supercharged the pathway for prospects from that country into European football.
“(Right to Dream) was a really good environment,” says Ibrahim Sadiq, a 25-year-old winger now at Dutch club AZ who progressed through the Right to Dream academy at the same time as Kudus. “There was a good schedule and balance. We were able to go to school and play football. The facilities were great — similar to grounds and facilities in Europe.”
Right to Dream provided a professional “student-athlete” programme, similar to the NCAA system at American colleges that places value on academics as well as developing potential professional athletes. There, Kudus progressed as a teenager alongside some of West Africa’s brightest talents.
“He grew up with a number of players who now play for the national team,” says Henry Asante Twum, a Ghanaian FA official who has seen Kudus develop from a youth player into a star for the country’s national team. “Kamaldeen Sulemana, who recently signed for Atalanta from Southampton, Ibrahim Sulemana, who also plays for Atalanta, and Ibrahim Osman at Brighton (now on loan to Auxerre) — they all grew up together.”
In the years before Right to Dream and similar academies offered a centralised pathway, West African talents relied on scouts linked to those professional clubs thousands of miles away, or youth tournaments with their national teams, to secure moves to Europe. Thanks to Right to Dream, Kudus had a direct route to playing in Scandinavia through Nordsjaelland, the Danish Superliga club known as FCN that the academy bought in 2015.
Kudus joined Spurs from West Ham this summer (Alex Pantling/Getty Images)
Kudus was invited to train with FCN at 16 and played in a summer tournament in England alongside the programme’s best Danish and Ghanaian talent, including now Brentford forward Mikkel Damsgaard. At the same time, he was progressing through Ghana’s youth setup. In 2017, he was called up by his country for the Under-17 Africa Cup of Nations; Ghana got to the final, earning qualification for the same age group’s World Cup in the October of that year.
The following August, FCN signed him to a professional contract on his 18th birthday, and he made his senior debut three days later.
“Moving to Denmark was not really hard,” says Sadiq, who moved to FCN from Right to Dream with Kudus. “At Right to Dream, we were used to travelling a lot for tournaments, so we already knew things like the climate and food in Europe. He always wanted to play football, to make fans happy, and I’ve never seen him nervous.”
FCN have a proud track record of providing a seamless environment for players to transition from Ghana to Denmark.
It’s no coincidence that, between 2018 and 2023, no senior club in world football awarded a higher percentage of minutes to under-20 players than their 37 per cent, including Sulemana, Osman, Kudus and Simon Adingra, who joined Sunderland this summer from Brighton.
The systems deployed in Ghana, Denmark and at the organisation’s other locations in Egypt and the U.S. city of San Diego are uniform, to the extent it is defined in its “playbook”, which helps players to hit the ground running. Still, there is a natural adjustment period for anyone, even those as talented as Kudus.
“He needed to find out that it wouldn’t be like the academy as a professional,” says Pedersen, who was FCN’s head coach at the time. “When he was in the academy, he won all of his one-v-one situations. When you get into professional men’s football, you meet players who are 10 kilograms (22lbs) heavier than you, and are as fast as you and much stronger. They’re more experienced and intelligent at reading your movements. He needed to get used to not being able to rely on his technical and physical qualities.
“He was extremely individual when he transitioned from Ghana to FCN. He slowly got used to a more collective game and understanding his defensive responsibilities: pressing and reading the game.”
Kudus was in and out of FCN’s starting line-up in that debut year but became a “powerhouse” by his second season in Denmark, scoring 11 goals in 25 league appearances. According to Pedersen, the switch was flicked during a conversation they had about understanding his role within the team.
Kudus in pre-season action for Spurs against Bayern Munich (Max Maiwald/Getty Images)
“Kudus is a player that you can’t just put into a stiff structure,” says Pedersen. “He needs to play with freedom to express himself. Still, we wanted to put him in our framework but allow the framework to help him express himself. We spoke about him wanting more freedom, and then we discussed the idea of structure versus freedom, and that it was not necessarily opposed. The structure could actually help him gain more freedom.
“I said, ‘OK, if you have a one-v-one in the attacking third, is there anything you want from your team-mates?’. He said, ‘Yes, I want my team-mates to stay away’. So I asked, ‘But what if your team-mate wants to run towards you? What if your team-mate tells us that he wants to play with freedom and wants to run towards you to get closer?’. He realised that his team-mate would take up the space and maybe attract another opponent. It helped him understand that the game is collective. Team-mates need to make demands of each other to get the best out of each other and the team.”
Off the back of that excellent second season for FCN, by which time he had established himself as “the best attacking midfielder in Denmark”, according to Pedersen, Kudus moved to Dutch giants Ajax in July 2020, a couple of weeks before turning 20. The transfer was the realisation of a lifelong dream for a boy from Nima, a suburb in Accra, once known for its gang violence and now famous for exporting Kudus, who frequently returns to his hometown to donate football boots and other equipment and organise community games.
“I remember conversations from as young as 17 — he was so determined to play in the Champions League,” says Asante-Twum. “Moving to Ajax was truly a dream come true for him. When he got there, he was not overawed by the stage — he never is.”
Though he made his Champions League debut in Ajax’s first group-stage game that October against Liverpool, Kudus’ debut season in Amsterdam was disrupted by a knee injury sustained early in that match. He was limited to eight starts in the domestic top flight, featuring primarily as a central midfielder or as a No 10. An ankle problem and rib fracture then prevented him from building much momentum in year two, where he started only four times in the Eredivisie.
With the 2022 World Cup on the horizon, Kudus was attracted by a proposal from Burnley and wanted to leave for the then Championship club, but they did not meet Ajax’s asking price. Everton also made a loan offer, but with several key starters departing after Erik ten Hag left for the Manchester United job in that summer window, new head coach Alfred Schreuder was determined to hang onto Kudus.
“Everyone told me he was one of the most talented players they had — but they needed to find a position for him,” Schreuder tells The Athletic. “I think in the beginning he wanted to leave, but we had sold so many players that summer, Antony, Lisandro Martinez, Ryan Gravenberch, Noussair Mazraoui, Nicolas Tagliafico… I told him, ‘You will play a lot’, but I had the feeling that he didn’t trust that at first.
“For me, it was a little bit difficult to find him a position in midfield. He wanted to play as a No 10, but in the Dutch league, those players are a little bit different. So I started to play him as a nine in the Champions League against Rangers, like a dropping (false) nine, and he was amazing.”
Kudus exploded into British football’s consciousness that season, scoring and assisting in that 4-0 win over Rangers in Ajax’s group opener, before adding another goal in a 2-1 defeat by Liverpool at Anfield a week later. Though Ajax failed to advance to the knockout phase, Kudus scored four goals and assisted twice in their six matches from that false nine position. His strong form in the Champions League carried into the World Cup that November and December in Qatar, where Kudus gained international recognition.
Kudus scored 27 goals in 87 games for Ajax (Patrick Goosen/Getty Images)
He was one of the breakout stars of the tournament, creating a goal for his idol Andre Ayew in a 3-2 defeat by Portugal, before scoring twice in a 3-2 victory against South Korea in their second group game. As with Ajax in that year’s Champions League, Ghana ultimately fell at the first hurdle following a 2-0 defeat by Uruguay, but not without Kudus significantly elevating his standing.
“After the World Cup and Champions League, he became very popular,” says Schreuder, who was sacked a few weeks later in a season where Ajax eventually finished third, “but he was very professional and extremely disciplined in the team effort. He runs a lot and works very hard — he’s not the kind of player you have to talk a lot with.
“You explain what you want from him, and he understands it. From there, you just have to let him play. I think when you let him play, he starts to trust you — he’s not the kind of player who needs to be too involved in the team’s tactics. He’s an introvert, but really an amazing and honest guy. He will never hide from you if you show him real interest.”
That summer, Kudus joined West Ham for £35m, following in the footsteps of his Ghanaian idols Michael Essien and Ayew in playing in the Premier League. He had an outstanding first season at the London Stadium, finishing with 14 goals and six assists in all competitions, featuring across the forward line and as an attacking midfielder.
West Ham gave Kudus his first taste of Premier League football (Bryn Lennon/Getty Images)
Last season, his second in east London, was more challenging as West Ham struggled, finishing 14th. The summer departure of first-team coach John Heitinga to join the Liverpool backroom staff and tension with short-lived new manager Julen Lopetegui, who was sacked in January, were cited as factors in his downturn. Ghana also failed to qualify for the Africa Cup of Nations, which starts this December.
Again, he split his minutes fairly evenly across the central striker, No 10 and wide positions, highlighting his versatility.
“For a team that wants to play (passing football), he can drop in as a nine into the midfield,” says Schreuder. “He is amazing at that. It depends on how the coach wants to use him — he can play from the right or in the 10. But it’s very difficult, I think, to define a position for him. For me, he’s not a classic No 10. In modern football, you have to play several positions — and he’s exactly that. I think (new Spurs head coach Thomas) Frank will use him in two or three positions. Winger, No 8 and No 9 are his best.”
More than anything, however, to get the best out of the “Star Boy”, as Kudus is called by his Ghana team-mates, the former Brentford manager must find a relationship with him on a personal level.
“You see the best of Kudus when he is connected with the coach,” says Pedersen. “Already, Thomas and I have been speaking about this. Kudus needs to be understood. I can already sense that Thomas has a really good feeling, and the relationship between Kudus and Thomas could be something special, because Thomas is a special coach when it comes to understanding his players.”
(Top photo: Valerio Pennicino/Getty Images)
Top top top player
Not sure he's shown himself to be striker material yet.
.......Winger or (in time) a killer Box-2-boxer in a 3MF.
as well.
A song for Kudus already?!
View: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DNTRWHGMixc/?igsh=MWhrNndzMG1keHJxbg==
View: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DNTRWHGMixc/?igsh=MWhrNndzMG1keHJxbg==
Bum off seat player
Finally a replacement for Mousa Dembele?