AIK’s work with academia brought in just over 50 million in the past week. Against Guevara, coach Henoch Guitum bet on the youngsters again – and it paid off.
Watch and learn from Gif Sundsvall, who should keep an eye on AIK’s young investment when the club has to start over in the Premier League.
It’s been a great few weeks too AIK Recently. First, it was clear that about 13 million Swedish kronor would enter the account when Alexander Isak was sold to Newcastle, where the club is entitled to a so-called solidarity compensation for its participation in the player’s training. AIK does not yet know when they will receive the funds, but the rules state that Newcastle have 30 days to pay the amount. And then that could be paid over a number of years, depending on the form of the payment between Newcastle and the Real Sociedad sale.
Shortly after Isaacs was acquitted of Newcastle, Ammar Abdul Rahman Ahmed was sold to Troyes AC, which is owned by City Football Group. There, AIK receives approximately 40 million Swedish kronor. So over 50 million net worth for AIK and that’s exactly what the club needs in this case.
It was a good company
Above all, selling a “Triple-A” is important because it shows how well AIK Academy is doing. An important signal when the club put a lot of resources into investing in young talent and where Alexander Isaacs (to Dortmund 2017) and Robin Quayson (to Palermo 2014) were the only two players from the academy who were sold for higher sums. .
But now they’ve found a good company and the AAA sale to Troyes is one of the biggest ever in Allsvenskan. Nice feather in the cap for AIK Academy work and investment in young players. It was not in vain that Bartsoz Grzelak had a clause written into his contract stating that he was entitled to a bonus if he played a certain number of young players for a certain number of minutes.
And taking a quick look at the first eleven match against Gif Sundsvall, it was said that there was a lot of potential sales that came from the academy in this version of AIK. Yassin Ayari, Bilal Hussein, Eric Ring and Joe Mendes all grew up in the black and yellow U teams and rose to the first team. I would be very surprised if at least two of these four are not sold out soon. Either this winter or in less than a year.
The four also competed and scored an impressive win over Jeff Sundsvall. Admittedly, the home team was saved by Christopher Nordfeldt, who was responsible for three really sweaty saves and saves on certain goals. On the other hand, the match was decided after 57 minutes, when Sotirios Papagianopoulos ran across the field and Nabil Bahwi played to make the score 2-0. Simple black, yellow and night black three-point by Gif Sundsvall.
Different worlds of football
Of course, you shouldn’t compare too much between Gif Sundsvall and AIK. They live in different football worlds. But Giffarna made it clear that the club would also invest in local products. Bet on young players who come from U-teams. It is incomprehensible, then, that the club would choose to bring in players from MLS 2 rather than investing in players like Ludwig Novick or Theodor Steinshagen. Both were off the bench against AIK, while Joa Corona and Forrest Laso were again trusted under coach Brian Clarholt, who was involved in the duo’s recruiting.
Gif Sundsvall is now past saving. They will go straight to the Premier League. So my advice is to start looking a little bit at how AIK works with young players. Don’t imitate or imitate, but introduce a mentality at the club where you invest in your own talents ahead of expensive American imports who seem to care more about how they perform themselves than thinking of Sundsvall as a team. And there’s hardly anything to say the business of investing in private talent can’t really start now, to give the likes of Nåvik, Stenshagen and Paya Pichkah valuable experience from the Allsvenskan. I think this will be good for the players themselves and for the club in general.
In the end, it was an expressive picture when AIK replaced Taha Ayari and Victor Anderson in the 87th minute. The duo comes from the academy where younger brother Ayari replaced older brother Yassin. And so the future continues to look bright for AIK.