Guidetti Unsettled At Stoke

[Meade86]

What a knob

 

[Dubai Blue]

The boy believes in himself, nothing wrong with that.

Was at a branch meeting about 3/4 years ago where Paul Power described him as 'extremely arrogant'

For someone like Paul I understand that he comes across as arrogant, but its not really arrogance, more like the new bread of footballs that's really super focused on success and has the elbows to make it happen

Whatever it is, he comes across as a right tit in that interview and Pellegrini won't be at all impressed by this kind of attitude. It's hardly unheard of for new players to be slowly bedded into a team, especially when they are completely unproven at the top level and have been out injured for so long. Sounds like he needs an urgent reality check on who he actually is.

That said, Stoke was always going to be the wrong move for him. Their football doesn't resemble anything like what we play and Hughes is under far too much pressure to be taking risks on the unknown: the fans hate him and they're in very real danger of going down. If City really did choose his destination then it may be that they already know he isn't going to make it with us.

 

[Mike N]

Bit of a Bendtner is he?

The thing is he would have been sold the idea of going to Stoke based on him getting time on the pitch. He must have been told he was getting some football very soon, ortherwise he would have gone to somewhere who would start him immediately. Why else go on loan?

Stoke didnt want to win the cup game, or get a replay. They need to concentrate on the league and if Hughes doesnt give him a chance soon, I can understand why he would be getting frustrated.

 

[kunaguero10]

Maybe not wise to go public but he has more talent in his eyelashes than the rest of those cloggers have in their whole bodies. He should never have gone to Stoke as Hughes is just clueless as the Chelsea game showed. You need only look at the Stoke forums to see what they think, they were screaming for him to come on the pitch.

<a class="postlink" href="http://oatcakefanzine.proboards.com/thread/225903/guidetti-serious" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://oatcakefanzine.proboards.com/thr ... ti-serious</a>

Most seem to like that he has passion and wants to play for them rather than the usual dross their players serve up. I also like that he is desperate for games to prove himself. He has the right attitude to make it far in the game.

I was surprised at the reaction on that Stoke forum, I thought more would be annoyed with the lack of respect he has shown. I guess it shows the plight of their team though and how shite their forwards (Walters especially) are.

 

[Dubai Blue]

<a class="postlink" href="http://oatcakefanzine.proboards.com/thread/225903/guidetti-serious" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://oatcakefanzine.proboards.com/thr ... ti-serious</a>

Most seem to like that he has passion and wants to play for them rather than the usual dross their players serve up. I also like that he is desperate for games to prove himself. He has the right attitude to make it far in the game.

I was surprised at the reaction on that Stoke forum, I thought more would be annoyed with the lack of respect he has shown. I guess it shows the plight of their team though and how shite their forwards (Walters especially) are.

And the complete lack of any respect that they themselves have for Hughes.

 

[GazC]

On the face of it, it doesn't sound good - but when you actually read his quotes and not the sensationalism around them they're pretty grounded - after all he's only on loan there. In my opinion at least, there's nothing wrong with a 'play me or lose me' attitude when on loan - if he doesn't get game time at Stoke it's in everybody's best interests if he is recalled and sent on loan elsewhere.

 

[Dubai Blue]

On the face of it, it doesn't sound good - but when you actually read his quotes and not the sensationalism around them they're pretty grounded - after all he's only on loan there. In my opinion at least, there's nothing wrong with a 'play me or lose me' attitude when on loan - if he doesn't get game time at Stoke it's in everybody's best interests if he is recalled and sent on loan elsewhere.

That's all well and good if it's said in the privacy of the manager's office, but there's no need to broadcast it to the whole world. He's publicly undermining the manager in front of his teammates with these comments, and that's never acceptable in my opinion.

 

[Bulldoglikeapproach]

Superb article about him recently in the Guardian. True, he is confident and he may always rub people the wrong way, but he is not a tw*t.



<a class="postlink" href="http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/jan/25/stoke-city-john-guidetti-chelsea-sweden" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.theguardian.com/football/201 ... sea-sweden</a>

"In Sweden it's not allowed to say good things about yourself," John Guidetti explains. "You're not allowed to dream. People used to ask me: 'What's your biggest dream?' I wanted to be the best football player in the world. That was my dream. Except in Sweden it's not accepted. 'Who does he think is?' they'd say. 'He should stop talking.' But who is someone to say I'm not allowed to dream? A dream is a dream, not necessarily reality, and if I could wish for anything, that would be my ultimate dream. I don't want a pool full of candy. I'd want to the best footballer in the world."
He's not an ordinary John. It doesn't take long to spot the Zlatan-levels of self-confidence, and before anyone suggests he might need bringing down a peg or two it is worth pointing out he is quite accustomed to people questioning whether he can walk the walk.
It is why his friends have suggested that when he finishes his career he opens a flower shop. "We'd call it Flowers for Doubters and send flowers to all the people who doubted me. All those people, they don't realise they drive me on. The flowers would be a little thank you."
We are talking in an upstairs room at Stoke City's training ground, where he is on loan from Manchester City, slowly rebuilding his career after the freakish illness that halted his sharp, upward trajectory as one of the outstanding young talents in his sport.
There is an irony here because there will no doubt be people reading this who have never even seen Guidetti on a football pitch, and suspecting a touch of the Nicklas Bendtner syndrome. Yet the people who have followed Guidetti's career will testify that this is a player of rare gifts. It is just that, so far, they have largely been kept from English football.

Mark Hughes, who knows a thing or two about strikers, intends to use the 21-year-old in Stoke's FA Cup tie at Chelsea on Sunday. Roberto Mancini is another admirer. One of Mancini's early fall-outs at Manchester City came in 2011 when he discovered the club had let Guidetti reach the end of his development contract. "I'd signed a pre-contract with Twente," Guidetti recalls. "Mancini intervened. He went to the club and said: 'Where's John?' City said: 'We let him go.' And Mancini said: 'No, no, what are you doing?' Lawyers had to get involved. I have a lot of respect for Mancini. He liked me as a player."
It was the following season, when Guidetti moved on loan to Feyenoord, that it became apparent there was more to him than – by his admission – having "a big mouth". At 19, he tore through the Eredivisie, scoring 20 times in 23 games, including hat-tricks against Ajax, Vitesse and Twente. His manager, Ronald Koeman, described him as "phenomenal".
"There were supporters getting tattoos of my name. Every home game, 50,000 people, on their feet, shouting 'Super Guidetti'. Everyone doing this [mimicking a two-handed bowing-down gesture]. They made a rap song and put me in it. 'Look at Messi, we have Guidetti.' It was amazing, the best year of my life."
He talks about this period at 100 words per minute. "Life was amazing. I was heading for the European Championship with Sweden. I was trying to be the top scorer in Holland. One of the newspapers had given me their player-of-the-year award. I was going to be the youngest Swedish player in history to go to the European Championship, in contention to start every game, alongside a great player like Zlatan Ibrahimovic. I was flying. Everything was amazing.
"But then we got to my 20th birthday. My girlfriend and some friends had organised a surprise party. They rented a restaurant and part of a nightclub. But I started to feel bad, really shit. I said to everyone: 'Listen, stay and party, you've done it beautifully, but I have to go home.' That was midnight. I woke up in the night puking. The manager was fuming with me because he thought I'd been partying but, no bullshit, I've never had a drop of alcohol in my life.
"I was out with this stomach virus for 10 days and when I went back to training I couldn't stand on my right leg. I just kept falling over. I was thinking: 'It's sleeping, man, why is my leg sleeping?' They said: 'Go on the bike, try to warm it up.' It didn't work. I tried to put my jeans on and fell over. I tried to put my pants on, fell straight back and hit my head. I couldn't stand. I had no balance. That's when they took me to hospital."
The doctors suspect the original illness was from a piece of infected chicken, and that the reaction was caused by the antibodies inside his stomach attacking both the virus and his nerve system, paralysing his right leg. "It knocked out the nerve system. The nerve needed to regrow and that takes longer than a wound or a muscle. Meanwhile, the problem is you lose muscle because you can't do anything with your leg. I lost all the strength in it. I couldn't stand on it. I couldn't do anything. They gave me this medicine to flush out my body and then literally it was all about waiting."
In total, he has missed nearly two years of football. "It's going to take a bit of time because you don't just go straight back and boom [clicks fingers]. I was working for 19 years to become what I was before. But I feel good. I just need to play games. You hear all these things - 'John's career is over,' la, la, la, la – and it's scary. I love football more than anything in the world. People care about certain things. Me? What I care about is scoring a goal in front of 50,000 people, all screaming your name. It's the best feeling in the world and I've missed it. I get goosebumps just thinking about it."
It is some story. Yes, Guidetti is not lacking in self-confidence, but he is a fascinating guy. Worldly, too, as might be expected of someone who spent two chunks of his childhood living just outside Nairobi and playing street football in Kibera, the largest urban slum in eastern Africa.
His father, Mike, had moved the family to Kenya to help with a schools project. "I loved it," Guidetti says. "My favourite place on earth. I tell everyone I want to live in Kenya when my career is finished. People say: 'You're crazy, you could live anywhere and you want to live there?' I say: 'Listen, it's the best place in the world.'"
He has set up the John Guidetti Foundation, which will build football pitches and schools in Kenya, and he scrolls through his phone to find a brilliant photograph of himself – a skinny little boy with a mop of blond hair – in a sea of black faces from his first club, the Black Stars Kibera. What age range? I ask, and then immediately realise it was a mistake. He smiles. "There aren't many passports, my friend."
His debut for Stoke came as a substitute at Crystal Palace last weekend. "I said to the Swedish media afterwards: 'If I had been on another 10 minutes, I was going to score.' I knew I was going to score. I felt it in my body and I'm not usually wrong. I score goals, that's what I do. I give energy. I went to Feyenoord and they said I made them believe again. That's what I do."
It is probably no surprise he polarises opinion back in Sweden. But surely, I ask, a nation that cherishes Ibrahimovic – the man who said the World Cup would not be worth watching if he were not involved – should embrace him, too?
"Zlatan?" he replies. "Trust me – just lately, people like him. Before that, nobody liked him. I'm telling you, in Sweden it's not allowed to talk about yourself in a good way. But you're always going to have doubters, people who say you're not good enough, you can't do this and can't do that. Plus I do talk a lot. I speak my mind. I go to Holland and say I'm going to score 20 goals. And I do it. You get injured for two years and you see people saying: 'He's nothing.' That's Flowers for Doubters, man. The people who say you can't make it – you're going to eat your words."

 

[sir baconface]

For someone like Paul I understand that he comes across as arrogant, but its not really arrogance, more like the new bread of footballs that's really super focused on success and has the elbows to make it happen

All that dough makes them very kneady.

 

[Damanino]

Sunderland-Stoke tomorrow and Stoke-MU at the weekend.

Hopefully he plays in both games.

Btw would laugh so much if Stoke went down after firing Pulis (who kept them up for like 5 years + FA CUP final) while Pulis keeps that shit Palace in PL.:)

Kinda huge relegation battle with about 7-8 teams still in it this season.