Tim Vickery Talks About South Americans in the Bundesliga

First of all, I need to apol­o­gize. I inter­viewed Tim back at the end of August and am just now get­ting this out. I feel I did a dis­ser­vice to the time he was so kind to give me. But, bet­ter late than never, so I have tran­scribed our talk about new South Amer­i­cans in the Bun­desliga. Here it is.

The focus our our talk was to dis­cuss new play­ers from the trans­fer win­dow, although we did dis­cuss some other play­ers as well. I will list the player and then his response.

Geromel at Cologne

He doesn’t feel that he will have much chance of mak­ing a dent in the World Cup squad for Brazil. Like many Brazil­ians ply­ing their trade abroad, he is vir­tu­ally unknown back home. This is espe­cially the case for play­ers that didn’t start off in the Brazil­ian league, and Geromel was devel­oped in Por­tu­gal. With no con­stituency, its almost impos­si­ble to get a call up. That con­stituency usu­ally is made through the fans and the media. Geromel is kind of like Alfonso Alves of Mid­dles­boro, who came out of nowhere and was able to use a bril­liant scor­ing record in Hol­land, includ­ing 7 in one game to force his way onto the side. But even then he and Dunga were roundly crit­i­cized when he was called up. Even if Geromel were to gar­ner the atten­tion of Dunga, it would not go over well with the fans and media.

Lucas Bar­rios at Dortmund

The Argen­tine brought over from Colo Colo of Chile has scored goals every­where. How­ever this has mostly been at smaller clubs. He’s fairly ungainly, which is pos­si­bly why it took him so long to get a chance at a big club like Colo Colo. But once again, he was able to score for them, so it will be inter­est­ing to see if he can tran­si­tion to the Bun­desliga. He’s a front-to-goal goalscorer, who likes to play off the last man. Not the best col­lec­tive player, but he has a record that can’t be dis­counted when it comes to judg­ing how he might do.

I asked about his quick­ness to pull out of a chal­lenge. Tim felt that it’s just an adjust­ment, as it is with so many South Amer­i­cans com­ing over to Europe, where they face defend­ers built like wardrobes.

Juan Arango of Gladbach

He’s a player Tim has always admired the Venezue­lan with the big boom­ing left foot. He’s been fol­low­ing him for over a decade, but he has been a lit­tle bit dis­ap­point­ing over the past two to three years. You expect a player to be bet­ter at 27 than 24, which hasn’t hap­pened. How­ever, he feels that he’s the type of player that tends to excel in Ger­many, where South Amer­i­can play­mak­ers have always fared well because the mid­field isn’t as squeezed as in Eng­land. but it’s also a nat­ural pro­gres­sion from Germany’s recent tran­si­tion from a three to four man back­line, where the defenses are still play­ing too deep, to com­pen­sate for the lack of a sweeper.

Rafinha of Schalke

Tim has always rated the full­back very highly. He wrote about him as early as 2005 for the World Soc­cer Mag­a­zine. He has ter­rific lung power with qual­ity end prod­uct. He’s an excel­lent attack­ing full­back. Being that he is behind Maicon and Daniel Alves, it could be a long time before he gets a chance with the World Cup squad. “Rafinha” sounds like “Hafinya” when pro­nounced by a Por­tuguese speaker.

Franco Zuculini of Hoffenheim

Excel­lent prospect! He’s a Diego Simione type fig­ure as an all-around cen­tral mid­fielder: gets his foot in, wins the tack­lel, is phys­i­cally dynamic, can get into the oppos­ing box and can score goals too. He’s a fiery char­ac­ter and a cen­tral mid­fielder of whom Argentina have a lot of hope for in the future at the senior level.

Maico­suel of Hoffenheim

He is a prospect who bounced around from club to club before explod­ing at Botafogo. He’s phys­i­cally frail and Tim is inter­ested to see how he adjusts to Ger­many. Even his good run at Botafogo was dur­ing the State Cham­pi­onships where he may have been flat­tered by the weak qual­ity in the oppo­si­tion. This run at the start of this year was the first time since he emerged three years ago that he actu­ally deliv­ered on his promise. While he has a lot of pace run­ning with the ball, it’s a bit of a gam­ble by Hof­fen­heim as the player has never shown abil­ity week-to-week against qual­ity opposition.

Marcelo Moreno Mar­tins or Werder Bremen

He’s Boli­vian, but his father was a Brazil­ian player. He is known in Bolivia as Marcelo Mar­tins. But when he came to Brazil to play he was called Marcelo Moreno (which is his first last name) due to the dif­fer­ences in cul­ture between the Por­tuguese and Span­ish speak­ing cul­tures. He scored a lot of goals for Cruzeiro. There’s a lit­tle bit of Gabriel Batis­tuta in him with­out the pace (although he wanted that com­par­i­son not to be overblown). He was squeezed out at Shak­tar but he can play up top and can link the play. If he doesn’t get much time at Werder due to the third return of Clau­dio Pizarro, it could spell doom for his career as a player needs to be play­ing at this age.

Mineiro of Schalke

He’s the guy that scored the goal for Sao Paulo that beat Liv­er­pool in 2005. He is hon­est as the day is long and will run all day. He makes up for a lack of tech­ni­cal abil­ity with his hon­esty and appli­ca­tion. Tim always thought he was a dis­as­ter pick-up for Sco­lari at Chelsea, as this free pickup more than any­one rein­forced the idea a Por­tuguese clique at Stam­ford Bridge. But he could see why he would be wanted. He is a good bloke to have around and per­haps that was what Mag­ath was look­ing for by pick­ing him up cheap: a good influ­ence in the dress­ing room.