Patrick Bamford scored a hat trick v. Aston Villa yesterday, watching on as Leeds United are winning 3-0 away and are flying in the Premier League at the moment. Marcelo Bielsa is a great man with a football brain that makes the magic happen.
Embed from Getty ImagesWe have seen this before at many arenas when suddenly players who are seen as promising and talented takes the giant step in one turn and just becomes great. Ronaldo and Messi are two players who have dominated and are players who you can easily see will flourish almost everywhere, Wayne Rooney and Zlatan Ibrahimovic are two others, that have been great always, but environmental reasons being spotted by the best at the right time, can be a key to their great success or just the road that made it possible to get were they are today.
For other players we have seen them either arriving from nowhere and used in the best way possible, being able to cement their place in a team and growing confidence in a role that the manager likes you in can be the difference from top or flop. Certain team mates in your team can also make you flourish as you are either served in the best way possible and set up as you like and a lot of reasons makes it all become perfect.
Patrick Bamford has always been seen as a great talent and his skills and football abilities have never been questioned, what have, is his ability to perform steady week in and week out and score the goals you would love him to score. Not strange that he is now getting to his best at an age that makes him more mature and of course working under the mastermind Marcelo Bielsa.
Patrick Bamford started his football career at Nottingham Forest, but at an early age moving on to Chelsea were he was overlooked from a first team point of view and started a career “on loan” at several clubs, but not really cementing anything as he wandered from club to club. He was always regarded as this guy with potential but no manager really made him his favorite forward alternative.
Chelsea didn’t really fancy him any longer and his future was uncertain, but the manager at the time Jose Mourinho recomended Patrick to move on, probably reluctantly moving down into the Championship with Middlesbrough agreeing a £5.5million move to Middlesbrough. He had reached the age of 24. After two years at The Riverside, not really setting the World on fire with 12 goals in 47 league appearances, Leeds United with new manager Marcelo Bielsa fancied his services and Leeds United paid £7million, with a total fee of £10million if certain criterias were reached and it looked as a bit of money to splash out at the time, but now this could turn out to be some of the best business ever to be done at Elland Road.
Embed from Getty ImagesBamford is already capped at England U.19 and U.21 level and also played for Ireland at lower youth level, but not yet made his full international breakthrough. Watching football and analyzing the game of many decades you see these happenings season in and season out.
Players like Jamie Vardy and Virgil Van Dijk er great examples of these types of happenings taking step by step and exploding at the the top. Mo Salah and Kevin De Bruyne are other examples of players who have been in the shadows at some place, taking a move out or down and then returning and getting their revenge somewhere else at the top.
So how are certain managers able to spot these type of talents and managing to get their “bargains” to fly, by knowledge, understanding and giving these type of players their confidence and time to bring out the best in them. But there are few people like Marcelo Bielsa, he is a “trolling figure” and he is “visionary”. Jurgen Klopp at Liverpool does have the same abilities and maybe former Leicester City manager Claude Puel must be seen in this category as well, developing players and taking them from one step to another, with examples of that happening at Leicester City with Caglar Soyuncu, Ricardo Pereira, Youri Tielemans and James Maddison, and Jonny Evans who was signed by Leicester City for a fee of £3.5million.
Embed from Getty ImagesOle Gunnar Solskjaer at Manchester United is also one to recognize, as he took Erling Braut Haaland on board at Molde, and we have seen what happened to him. OGS is probably in bigger shoes at the moment than he can fill, but his eyes for spotting talent at all ages is well documented and he is a man with a football brain that shouldn’t be underestimated.
It’s great to see players who have not fulfilled their talent at a younger age, coming back and hopefully getting to the scene they deserve as they are battling on and finding their football life back in the limelight either with former greats or at those winning trophies seasons in and seasons out.