Is that so..
Hojbjerg?
- Thread starter Holle
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Ah oui monsieur Kay Atch El!
wife, kids, moving here and helping KHL back home.
Oi-Berg would suffice.
Call myself Oi-Berg
Yeah do that, but please wait until he's signed for us, okay. Really don't wanna see him go to City or Arsenal or somewhere like that because of your jinx'y use of usernames.
Welcome to the site. Be positive, enjoy yourself, ignore those who bother you and post away Xhaka!
If I had to put money on it, I can see Boro signing him ... Play with Fischer ...
Split thread >>> http://www.sixcrazyminutes.com/index.php?threads/the-nomad.85510/
..also one of the main reasons we never should have signed Mignoglet in the first place...
Or go near that other Belgian from Roma.. Naniggogolan.. Nagialolan.... Naglanogogo.. Radja.
PS We could go with his first name of 'Pierre'. Have we ever had a Pierre in the team? Or his second first name 'Emile'.. that's almost like having Heskey back
His name means High Mountain so in Danish terms he should be around 1.60 high or so??
We should just name him The Mountain
For reading pleasure (from Pep Confidential: Inside Pep Guardiola's First Season at Bayern Munich - written in 2014)
[article]Pep ConfidentialPep still wants a private chat with two of his players. The first is Pierre-Emile Højbjerg, a midfielder who made his debut for the first team in April 2013 aged only 17. Albert Celades, a former Barça and Real Madrid player and currently the Spanish Under-21 coach, has prepared a detailed report on the youngster for Guardiola, in which he describes Højbjerg as a diamond in the rough. Guardiola has watched the player carefully during this first session and at the end puts a hand on his shoulder. The coach intends to invest time and effort in refining and correcting the young Dane’s performance. This will start with intensive sessions over the next four weeks and then more sporadically throughout the season. He will set about teaching him all the tricks of the trade which he himself, having played in the same position, learned as a youngster.[/article]
[article]Pep ConfidentialOn joining, Guardiola was given the No.4 shirt, little knowing that he was about to define that position – that number – at Barça.
Cruyff saw him as a crucial part of his nascent Dream Team, whose mesmerising football would sow the seeds of Barça’s ascendancy for decades to come.
Conscious of his own failings, Pep set out to maximise his talents. Lacking speed himself, he would ensure that the ball circulated at a pace that no player could ever match. Unwilling to risk too many physical tackles, he used his devastating passing to cut through the opposition. As a young player, Guardiola was already forming the football philosophy he would later implement so successfully as a coach; high-speed, attacking football as the best form of defence; effective passing and ball control, and as little hard tackling as possible.
We sat down together one December day in 2013, just after training.
‘Do you think I would have lasted 11 years at Barça if all they were looking for was speed, strength and the ability to score goals?’ In the 385 games he played for Barcelona, Pep scored just 13 goals.
To survive in the jungle of the football world he had had to foster and exploit the natural skills he possessed, rare as they were at that time. He used his personal training regime to develop not just physical strength but technical prowess and was happy to play a supportive role, distributing the ball with deadly accuracy. Pep prided himself on his ability to anticipate the next move even before he had the ball at his feet and delighted in using his passing to trick his opponents and break through their lines.
‘If I had a line of five rivals in front of me, as usual, they’d want to make sure that we could only circulate the ball in a U-like circular movement in front of them – searching from wing to wing for space via the midfield, but never getting any depth or creating any danger. This line of five midfielders would inevitably be tightly pegged to the four defenders behind them – there would be no space between the lines. These two compact lines of opposition obliged me to use space wide in order to avoid danger. I’d use two wingers – making themselves available on each touchline and capable of going deep when it was the right time. The other attackers needed to move between the two lines. To achieve that I had to lead the line of five astray – move it about, shake it up, introduce disorder, trick it into thinking that I was about to go wide again and then – boom! – split them with an inside pass to one of the strikers. And that’s that. They are turned inside out, suddenly having to run towards their own goal. Basically, that’s how I separated my team from others during my career.’
All of this is exactly what Pep wants from his holding midfielder. At Barça he found it in Sergio Busquets and here in Weiden in der Oberpfalz, in late June 2013, it is the young Pierre-Emile Højbjerg he has in his sights.
Pep heard good things about Højbjerg before coming to Bayern and it has taken just a couple of training sessions for him to fall in love with the player who, having started in April under Heynckes, clearly has a dazzling future ahead of him. Højbjerg reads the game brilliantly and has an astonishing ability to break through five players with a single pass. Pep thinks that he may just have found the Busquets of Bayern, although at 17 the young player has a bit of maturing to do. In fact Højbjerg is the only one of the 23 to play the full 90 minutes of this friendly. The game ends with a 15-1 victory and, as expected, their rivals have given them very few problems.[/article]
[article]Pep ConfidentialThe second objective of this training session focuses on ensuring players combine and co-operate to press the opposition (wherever on the pitch) and on marking. When the central defender goes out to press the opposition striker, the organising midfielder must drop back and fill his space. If the full-back moves up to press the winger, then the central defender must move to cover and, once again, the pivote midfielder must drop back to cover the central defender. If they succeed in pressing the winger then the full-back, central defender and organising midfielder will each have been crucial in robbing the ball back.
The Bayern players go over these moves again and again. From time to time Pep stops the game and corrects them, especially Boateng and Højbjerg. He wants them to get to the point that co-ordination between them becomes instinctive. ‘It has to be instantaneous. If Jérôme moves up to challenge, Højbjerg, you cover his position. If Lahm runs, Jérôme covers him and Højbjerg covers Jérôme.’
Pierre-Emile Højbjerg, like Sergio Busquets, the linchpin of Barcelona, has a natural sense of position. It is an innate skill and something he has never needed to work on. At just 17 he does most of the right things automatically. He has also come along ready and willing to learn, unlike another promising young player who seems to react badly to Guardiola’s corrections.
A team is a living entity. Some players develop and improve, like Shaqiri, who is impressing the coach with his work, or Højbjerg and Boateng, who seem to soak up every little detail. But there are also others who disengage, either in terms of performance or their attitude. A team is not a homogenous group.[/article]
[article]Pep ConfidentialWith neither Thiago nor Schweinsteiger (who has a damaged tendon in his knee), the coach picks Højbjerg to start the game against Dortmund. Ten months have passed since the pre-season training camp in Trentino, where Pep first spotted the young Dane’s potential.
He has worked intensively with the player throughout the year and now his time has come. During the last 10 months Højbjerg had not disappointed him once. Some days he had even turned up unannounced at the first team’s dressing room, pretending that he’d wandered over absent-mindedly. On those occasions Pep always gave him a hug and sent him out to train anyway. Fiercely loyal and desperate to learn, Højbjerg’s respect and passion for the coach is obvious.
‘Pep thinks about training in the now and for the future,’ says Højbjerg. ‘He wants to win today but he wants to keep winning tomorrow and that’s why he shows so much interest in us young players. It’s like he’s injecting his own tactical ideas in the team’s bloodstream. It’s not just about this week but for the future as well. In that respect he has gone much further than Heynckes. Pep doesn’t reduce his planning to mere preparation for the next game.
Everything he does is underpinned by his passion and his philosophy. Heynckes was all about winning. Pep, too, wants to win today, but he wants the club to still be winning in years to come. And the team knows that we can be sure of great success over the next five years. We have the right mentality, the right character and we just need to learn to be more emotional if we want to play even better.’
In the last few weeks Højbjerg has been performing brilliantly and has been called up to play for Denmark in two friendlies, against Hungary and Sweden.
‘Can you believe it? Playing against Zlatan [Ibrahimovic]! And in my home city, Copenhagen! I can’t wait! And you know, there’s a little chapel I used to go to with my dad [his father passed away one month ago] just behind the stadium. My mum is delighted. And she’s coming to watch the Cup final in Berlin.’
At this point Højbjerg still didn’t know that Pep had decided to put him in his starting line-up against Dortmund, although it was pretty evident in the training sessions. Lorenzo Buenaventura had recently introduced strength-resistance exercises, but the training sessions were focused on tactics as the final drew near.
‘Pep is the best thing that could have happened to Bayern,’ Højbjerg says. ‘Last year the team was amazing and I was wondering how Bayern could get any better. Yet Pep has taught us new and better tactics in every training session, every day, in every video and team talk. We all knew that the team could play football, but if you improve tactically then your control of the ball gets even better. Bayern were at 99% of our full potential and Pep has added that crucial 1%.’[/article]
[article]Pep ConfidentialBAYERN SET OFF for Munich with the cup they have won in Berlin, the capital city which has become a talisman for Pep this year. Thousands of fans await the team in Marienplatz, ready to celebrate their double-winning season and, on the way, I chat to two of the players who are most symbolic of Pep’s first year in charge: Højbjerg and Lahm.
Firstly, I ask Højbjerg what he has learned from Pep. ‘To be a bit bolder with the ball. He’s shown me how important it is to play without fear. Just to get on with playing whether you’re up against Xabi Alonso or a complete amateur. Play with courage and without fear, and “show some balls”, as Pep puts it. When you’re young you can be a bit hesitant about things, but that gets you nowhere. You have to give it everything if you want to improve. Pep has insisted that I let go of any anxiety or hesitancy when I play. He’s also taught me a huge amount about tactics and about defending. I’ve learned to stay when my team-mate pushes forward and to attack as high up as I can when it’s my turn to push on. He’s taught me all about the right tactics and shown me how to play with passion, intelligence and courage. I had some difficult times this season and Pep really helped me. He told me that I only needed to dedicate 90 minutes a day to football, but that those 90 minutes had to be full-on. If I did that, he assured me, I could stop worrying about my game.’
Højbjerg joined Bayern in 2012 when he was just 16 and initially struggled with a four-day per week training schedule.
‘I was pretty small and my body couldn’t cope with so much work. I was basically sore all over for an entire year. And this year with Pep has been similar. At times I’ve had real problems keeping up with the older guys’ training schedule – six times a week.’[/article]
Højbjerg seemed to have falled out with Guardiola a couple of months later though.
http://www.bavarianfootballworks.co...uardiola-contract-extension-not-peps-decision
[article]Pep ConfidentialPep still wants a private chat with two of his players. The first is Pierre-Emile Højbjerg, a midfielder who made his debut for the first team in April 2013 aged only 17. Albert Celades, a former Barça and Real Madrid player and currently the Spanish Under-21 coach, has prepared a detailed report on the youngster for Guardiola, in which he describes Højbjerg as a diamond in the rough. Guardiola has watched the player carefully during this first session and at the end puts a hand on his shoulder. The coach intends to invest time and effort in refining and correcting the young Dane’s performance. This will start with intensive sessions over the next four weeks and then more sporadically throughout the season. He will set about teaching him all the tricks of the trade which he himself, having played in the same position, learned as a youngster.[/article]
[article]Pep ConfidentialOn joining, Guardiola was given the No.4 shirt, little knowing that he was about to define that position – that number – at Barça.
Cruyff saw him as a crucial part of his nascent Dream Team, whose mesmerising football would sow the seeds of Barça’s ascendancy for decades to come.
Conscious of his own failings, Pep set out to maximise his talents. Lacking speed himself, he would ensure that the ball circulated at a pace that no player could ever match. Unwilling to risk too many physical tackles, he used his devastating passing to cut through the opposition. As a young player, Guardiola was already forming the football philosophy he would later implement so successfully as a coach; high-speed, attacking football as the best form of defence; effective passing and ball control, and as little hard tackling as possible.
We sat down together one December day in 2013, just after training.
‘Do you think I would have lasted 11 years at Barça if all they were looking for was speed, strength and the ability to score goals?’ In the 385 games he played for Barcelona, Pep scored just 13 goals.
To survive in the jungle of the football world he had had to foster and exploit the natural skills he possessed, rare as they were at that time. He used his personal training regime to develop not just physical strength but technical prowess and was happy to play a supportive role, distributing the ball with deadly accuracy. Pep prided himself on his ability to anticipate the next move even before he had the ball at his feet and delighted in using his passing to trick his opponents and break through their lines.
‘If I had a line of five rivals in front of me, as usual, they’d want to make sure that we could only circulate the ball in a U-like circular movement in front of them – searching from wing to wing for space via the midfield, but never getting any depth or creating any danger. This line of five midfielders would inevitably be tightly pegged to the four defenders behind them – there would be no space between the lines. These two compact lines of opposition obliged me to use space wide in order to avoid danger. I’d use two wingers – making themselves available on each touchline and capable of going deep when it was the right time. The other attackers needed to move between the two lines. To achieve that I had to lead the line of five astray – move it about, shake it up, introduce disorder, trick it into thinking that I was about to go wide again and then – boom! – split them with an inside pass to one of the strikers. And that’s that. They are turned inside out, suddenly having to run towards their own goal. Basically, that’s how I separated my team from others during my career.’
All of this is exactly what Pep wants from his holding midfielder. At Barça he found it in Sergio Busquets and here in Weiden in der Oberpfalz, in late June 2013, it is the young Pierre-Emile Højbjerg he has in his sights.
Pep heard good things about Højbjerg before coming to Bayern and it has taken just a couple of training sessions for him to fall in love with the player who, having started in April under Heynckes, clearly has a dazzling future ahead of him. Højbjerg reads the game brilliantly and has an astonishing ability to break through five players with a single pass. Pep thinks that he may just have found the Busquets of Bayern, although at 17 the young player has a bit of maturing to do. In fact Højbjerg is the only one of the 23 to play the full 90 minutes of this friendly. The game ends with a 15-1 victory and, as expected, their rivals have given them very few problems.[/article]
[article]Pep ConfidentialThe second objective of this training session focuses on ensuring players combine and co-operate to press the opposition (wherever on the pitch) and on marking. When the central defender goes out to press the opposition striker, the organising midfielder must drop back and fill his space. If the full-back moves up to press the winger, then the central defender must move to cover and, once again, the pivote midfielder must drop back to cover the central defender. If they succeed in pressing the winger then the full-back, central defender and organising midfielder will each have been crucial in robbing the ball back.
The Bayern players go over these moves again and again. From time to time Pep stops the game and corrects them, especially Boateng and Højbjerg. He wants them to get to the point that co-ordination between them becomes instinctive. ‘It has to be instantaneous. If Jérôme moves up to challenge, Højbjerg, you cover his position. If Lahm runs, Jérôme covers him and Højbjerg covers Jérôme.’
Pierre-Emile Højbjerg, like Sergio Busquets, the linchpin of Barcelona, has a natural sense of position. It is an innate skill and something he has never needed to work on. At just 17 he does most of the right things automatically. He has also come along ready and willing to learn, unlike another promising young player who seems to react badly to Guardiola’s corrections.
A team is a living entity. Some players develop and improve, like Shaqiri, who is impressing the coach with his work, or Højbjerg and Boateng, who seem to soak up every little detail. But there are also others who disengage, either in terms of performance or their attitude. A team is not a homogenous group.[/article]
[article]Pep ConfidentialWith neither Thiago nor Schweinsteiger (who has a damaged tendon in his knee), the coach picks Højbjerg to start the game against Dortmund. Ten months have passed since the pre-season training camp in Trentino, where Pep first spotted the young Dane’s potential.
He has worked intensively with the player throughout the year and now his time has come. During the last 10 months Højbjerg had not disappointed him once. Some days he had even turned up unannounced at the first team’s dressing room, pretending that he’d wandered over absent-mindedly. On those occasions Pep always gave him a hug and sent him out to train anyway. Fiercely loyal and desperate to learn, Højbjerg’s respect and passion for the coach is obvious.
‘Pep thinks about training in the now and for the future,’ says Højbjerg. ‘He wants to win today but he wants to keep winning tomorrow and that’s why he shows so much interest in us young players. It’s like he’s injecting his own tactical ideas in the team’s bloodstream. It’s not just about this week but for the future as well. In that respect he has gone much further than Heynckes. Pep doesn’t reduce his planning to mere preparation for the next game.
Everything he does is underpinned by his passion and his philosophy. Heynckes was all about winning. Pep, too, wants to win today, but he wants the club to still be winning in years to come. And the team knows that we can be sure of great success over the next five years. We have the right mentality, the right character and we just need to learn to be more emotional if we want to play even better.’
In the last few weeks Højbjerg has been performing brilliantly and has been called up to play for Denmark in two friendlies, against Hungary and Sweden.
‘Can you believe it? Playing against Zlatan [Ibrahimovic]! And in my home city, Copenhagen! I can’t wait! And you know, there’s a little chapel I used to go to with my dad [his father passed away one month ago] just behind the stadium. My mum is delighted. And she’s coming to watch the Cup final in Berlin.’
At this point Højbjerg still didn’t know that Pep had decided to put him in his starting line-up against Dortmund, although it was pretty evident in the training sessions. Lorenzo Buenaventura had recently introduced strength-resistance exercises, but the training sessions were focused on tactics as the final drew near.
‘Pep is the best thing that could have happened to Bayern,’ Højbjerg says. ‘Last year the team was amazing and I was wondering how Bayern could get any better. Yet Pep has taught us new and better tactics in every training session, every day, in every video and team talk. We all knew that the team could play football, but if you improve tactically then your control of the ball gets even better. Bayern were at 99% of our full potential and Pep has added that crucial 1%.’[/article]
[article]Pep ConfidentialBAYERN SET OFF for Munich with the cup they have won in Berlin, the capital city which has become a talisman for Pep this year. Thousands of fans await the team in Marienplatz, ready to celebrate their double-winning season and, on the way, I chat to two of the players who are most symbolic of Pep’s first year in charge: Højbjerg and Lahm.
Firstly, I ask Højbjerg what he has learned from Pep. ‘To be a bit bolder with the ball. He’s shown me how important it is to play without fear. Just to get on with playing whether you’re up against Xabi Alonso or a complete amateur. Play with courage and without fear, and “show some balls”, as Pep puts it. When you’re young you can be a bit hesitant about things, but that gets you nowhere. You have to give it everything if you want to improve. Pep has insisted that I let go of any anxiety or hesitancy when I play. He’s also taught me a huge amount about tactics and about defending. I’ve learned to stay when my team-mate pushes forward and to attack as high up as I can when it’s my turn to push on. He’s taught me all about the right tactics and shown me how to play with passion, intelligence and courage. I had some difficult times this season and Pep really helped me. He told me that I only needed to dedicate 90 minutes a day to football, but that those 90 minutes had to be full-on. If I did that, he assured me, I could stop worrying about my game.’
Højbjerg joined Bayern in 2012 when he was just 16 and initially struggled with a four-day per week training schedule.
‘I was pretty small and my body couldn’t cope with so much work. I was basically sore all over for an entire year. And this year with Pep has been similar. At times I’ve had real problems keeping up with the older guys’ training schedule – six times a week.’[/article]
Højbjerg seemed to have falled out with Guardiola a couple of months later though.
http://www.bavarianfootballworks.co...uardiola-contract-extension-not-peps-decision
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