He whizzes around the court with the speed of a hurricane and the instinct of a shooter. At the age of 16, he made his debut for Leipzig’s first team and in the autumn he became the top scorer in the under-17 Bundesliga. His name is Yannick Eduardo. There wasn’t much left, and he included a start for the Czech national team among his milestones. Yes, you read that right. The young striker was born in 2006 in Kadani to a Czech mother and an Angolan father. However, the Netherlands, where Eduardo grew up, is leading the tug-of-war for a talented footballer.
It was the year when the Czech national team last appeared at the world championship. Since then, he has struggled while flirting with the elite tournament. She did not secure an invitation to the world party in any of the four other possible cases.
In 2006, Yannick Eduardo was also born in Kadani. That the name doesn’t mean anything to you? Get smart, because this is a boy who is rumored today to be a future star of the Bundesliga. And he could bring the Czech Republic back to the World Cup one day, if he agreed and started wearing the Czech national colors.
He is currently wearing the Oranjes jersey
So far, however, the story of the footballer, who has Czech and Dutch citizenship in addition to Czech citizenship, is developing against the Czechs. He decided to represent the Oranjes, although the Czech coaches are trying their best to convince them.
Eduardo was spotted on Instagram for the first time. “I saw the Instagram clips. After that, I also received some matches from Nijmegen and Leipzig. But already on Instagram, I thought to myself that he looks really good.” Petr Havlíček remembers how he began the process of persuading Eduard to come play for the Czech under-17 national team. He likes the well-built guy. “Yannick is tall, strong and equipped with speed, he has a good left-hander, a drive on goal, a good dribble and a good game with his back to the goal,” lists the strengths of a gifted striker.
In short, he is a player that every coach would like to have on the team. “We registered interest from top clubs from the Netherlands, Germany, England and Italy,” lists manager Bas Schothorst. “But I suspected from the beginning that Yannick would feel best in Leipzig. It is a great club for his development. After we visited several clubs, Yannick and his family decided to choose Leipzig.”
The move to Germany cannot be praised by the young footballer. “So far everything is fine. I have a good relationship with the club, coaches and players. I play in a tough competition and I managed to score quite a few goals.” he boasts when asked how he is in Leipzig. He has a total of 11 goals in 12 games and thanks to this, Eduardo has dominated the U17 Bundesliga scorers’ table.
Pattern? Erling Haaland
But he doesn’t know much about Czech football. No wonder. He comes from a generation that was completely missed by the successful era of Pavel Nedvěd, Tomáš Rosicky or Petr Čech. “To tell the truth, I mainly watch the Premier League and the Bundesliga. I take it that when I watch football, I want to learn something and that’s why I only watch the top competitions.” His role model is Erling Haaland, the 22-year-old Manchester City star.
When you play clips of Eduardo’s goals, you will see that he can finish in many ways. He immediately catches your eye with his height and speed, and one can’t help but feel that he might be watching the future successor of the Norwegian shooter who has been impressing the Islands since the summer. “I hear it often and I’m happy for this compliment because Erling Haaland is my favorite player,” laughs Eduardo.
However, he still has a long way to go and hard work to grow to Haaland’s stature. However, Eduardo is not afraid of her. He works ambitiously on himself every day. He wants to be better than others.
Manager Schothorst nods. “Yannick has a lot of potential and wants to be one of the best in the world one day. I have to say that he is amazing to work with in this regard – he is extremely focused on training and self-development. He constantly has a lot of questions to improve himself.” explains the man who hopes that Eduardo will present himself at the spring European championship under 17 years.
First look at the A-Team
Progress is also being noticed in Leipzig. During the World Cup, when coach Marco Rose’s first team needed to add to the squad, selected youngsters from the academy received an invitation. Eduardo was among them. He made a good impression on the coaches. He will spend the first week of January with the team at a training camp in Abu Dhabi.
“I’m glad for the experience, because I can continue to improve thanks to such opportunities. Moreover, it’s a great compliment for me that if the first team needs some players from the academy, I will be among the first to be pointed to.” brags Eduardo, who is studying at an international school in Germany and, in addition to Dutch, English, and mind-numbing Czech, he also knows the basics of German.
In short, his nature is set on the path of a professional athlete, which is also confirmed by Havlíček. “He’s set up right. When you talk to him, you don’t think he’s a sixteen-year-old boy, but a grown man.” Eduardo timidly nods: “Yes, after every match I’m interested in feedback, I’m interested in analyzing my performances and I want to know what I can be even better at. And I’m also working on myself.”
Leipzig offers him ideal conditions. There are few better places in Europe to nurture young footballers than the talent factory two hours by car from Prague, which Eduardo and his family have already experienced firsthand. “Everything is in place to make me a good professional footballer.”
The decision to represent the Netherlands stems from the youngster’s ambitious attitude, even though Havlíček maintains regular contact with him and they have conversations that usually end in non-football topics. The Czech coach would very much like Eduardo to accept his invitation and elevate domestic football. “We have a lot of great players, but genetically they are different. Yannick would bring us a unique superstructure,” a man whom Eduardo respects knows.
When he showed up in Prague for a few days between holidays, he didn’t hesitate to invite the Czech coach and his partner to lunch and introduce them to his mother. “He still hasn’t made up his mind. He’s very careful about being born here,” Havlíček continues to believe in success.
A short walk from a basketball career
However, for the time being Eduardo pointed to the Netherlands, where he grew up from the age of two, he has friends in the national team and it is a bigger challenge for him to make his mark in huge competition. “I am a player who still needs to improve a lot and here are the best players from the whole country. Playing and training with them pushes me forward. I don’t know if I will represent the Netherlands or the Czechia in the future, but I have evaluated it so that at the moment it is for the best option for me is to play for the Netherlands,” the dreadlocked forward, who likes to return to his hometown, explains his decision. He still manages to speak Czech so that he can talk to his grandmother in Kadani. “I can have fun, yes, but talking in Czech about football and my career is not possible. That’s already hard for me,” laughs Eduardo when he uses Czech words for the first time during the interview.
However, it occurs to Lecko that he would be more suitable for basketball players. However, it was also not far from Yannick devoting himself to the same sport as his four-year-older brother Cortesao Joao Eduardo, who works at USK Prague.
“When I was younger, I wanted to be a basketball player,” he remembers. However, at the age of five, he was still very young. He stayed with football. When he did grow up, he was determined to trade grass for decking. “It was already looking like I was going to quit football. My last practice came and that’s when I realized I couldn’t do it because I fell in love with it.”
There are debates about where in the family sports talent comes from. The brothers inherited their height, and perhaps their talent, from their mother, who is 183 centimeters tall and used to be involved in high-level sports, like their father. However, Eduardo has his own thesis. “My brother and I have come this far thanks to our mental attitude – from an early age we train more than others, we compete with each other, we joke about who trains more, who does more sets in the gym…,” concludes the ambitious kid.
Whatever national colors he chooses in the future, we can’t help but feel that we’ll see him shine at the World Championships anyway thanks to his determination.
Tags: secretive CzechDutch talent talks Haalands inspiration chance play Czechia
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