Nigeria, Senegal, Qatar, Belgium. Lessons for Celtic

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Henry Onyekuru, the wide-attacking 20-year-old Celtic targeted in January, looks set to join Arsenal from Belgian club KAS Eupen. The player had a tremendous season for his newly promoted club, alerting Celtic, and prompting a walkout by the player, when his hope of a transfer in the winter window was rejected.

The moral of this story is that it has become increasingly difficult to sign even 20-year-olds who had no pedigree a year ago, when Arsenal can bid £6.8m for a player who is likely to sit for most of the season in the stands.

For Celtic, the Onyekuru experience should be informative. The player came to Belgium from the Aspire Academy in Qatar. He joined the Academy’s Senegal training facility as a 13-year-old, before moving to the Aspire Football Dreams (AFD) project at the Qatari capital, Doha.

The AFD is a humanitarian project, allowing promising kids the best opportunity to develop as footballers, while receiving an educational scholarship. As you would expect from a Qatari project, it is not underfunded.

KAS Eupen were bought by the Aspire Zone Foundation five years ago and are the Qataris route to Europe for their Academy graduates.

Processes like Aspires costs money and takes time, perhaps a decade, to bear fruit, but the money involved isn’t beyond Celtic’s grasp. As we continue to look to innovate, this case study is worth contemplating.

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326 Comments

  1. The Green Man says SACK THE Board on

    Speed Test

     

     

    Virgin

     

    41.33 Mbps

     

     

    Always a stronger signal in the city.

     

     

    HH

  2. Jobo

     

     

    I am just along the road from you and also dislike Virgin.

     

     

    TV ok but Internet is forever not available.

     

     

    Kids winge all the time.

     

     

    Think I will try BT or else back to SKY but with BT/virgin

     

    getting all European games I think I was about £130 quid to get

     

    SKY and Virgin football.

     

     

    : > (

     

     

    I’ll get a deal for a year(SKY) hopefully as they are always trying to get me back.

  3. Jobo….

     

     

    I got stung with BT a while ago, my bills escalated from £23 to over a hundred as stupidly I didn’t read the small print.

     

     

    After a year I wasn’t unlimited broadband. HH

  4. mike in toronto on

    BMCUWP ….

     

     

    With you now getting a deletion, I think that may leave me as the only one of CQN’s old guard who has not had a post deleted!

     

     

    I am feeling like I need to pull my socks up, and get this deletion thing sorted … once and for all.

     

     

    I missed your post, but any tips on what I might say that would get a deletion?

     

     

    Anyone else feel free to chip in with suggestions as well.

     

     

    :)

  5. blantyretim is praying for the Knox family on

    No problems with Virgin down here

     

     

    Even receive a discount because I’ve been with them since telewest days

     

     

    Jobo

     

    Put your work. Voice on and negotiate a better deal and get new hub from them

  6. mike in toronto on

    BLANTYRETIM IS PRAYING FOR THE KNOX FAMILY on 26TH JUNE 2017 8:21 PM

     

    No problems with Virgin down here

     

     

    ************

     

     

    nahh….. too easy! If I’m going to get a deletion, I cant just take an easy one … after, what, 13 years on CQN, my first deletion has to be a good one…

  7. !!Bada Bing!! on

    Sipsini- same mate re BB with BT , contract up in August so will be a wee bit smarter i hope….;(

  8. Got a new Hub a few months ago but things aren’t really any better. And as I now have the facility to occasionaly work from home I’m then totally depndent on having internet access all day.

     

     

    Might still threaten to leave and see if I can save a wee bit; to donate towards by Bhoy’s settlement bill obviously!

     

     

    Ta much y’all

  9. The Green Man says SACK THE Board on

    MIT

     

     

    One you get to a hundred deletions, you will be doing well:)

     

    For every three posts, i allow for one deletion.

     

     

    HH

  10. JOBO

     

     

    I’mon a virgin package called MIX no sports but when I phoned up to cancel they gave me 6 months free BT sport so I kept it at only £55 P/M. Give them aphone first and see what you can get out of them. If you don’t ask you don’t get. Good luck.

     

     

    KEEP THE FAITH

  11. blantyretim is praying for the Knox family on

    MIT

     

    On a plate for you too, could be a sine die more than a deletion though

  12. Log onto your hub by typing

     

     

    192.168.0.1 in you’re URL. Login with default password that’ll be on your hub, if you have been daft enough not to change it yet. If you haven’t changed it do it noo. Default is ‘changeme’.

     

     

    Once you have logged in and changed password from defaults for hub and also wifi if you haven’t done that either (mind change password for both 2ghz and 5ghz) then go into advanced settings and turn off hubs firewall. Obviously only if you have security on you PC/laptop etc.

     

     

    Turning off firewall will speed things up a little.

     

     

    All of above for virgin. Sky has similar for passwords and firewall.

     

     

    MWD

  13. mike in toronto on

    TGM …now I really feel like a complete underachiever!

     

     

    When you consider that at least a few of George Carlin’s ‘7 works that you cant say on TV’ seem to slip by on CQN unedited, and a few others in edited form, it seems like the wild west on here! ….., how the (&*&%)( does one manage to get to 100?!

     

     

    :)

  14. The bingers an’ the whingers..

     

    ..(no’ tae mention the wainjurz!)

     

     

    fair like a scrap…….

     

     

    ….It wasn’t like this in the real…………. oul’ days eh!

     

     

    ;)

  15. All this retirement talk has me envious. Counting down to my own:

     

     

    December 2018 I’m wrapping it on my 60th. Can’t wait….counting the years, months, weeks and days……

     

     

    Eurochamps / enjoy bud.

  16. mike in toronto on

    TnT … that’s no fair! You shouldn’t be able to manufacture deletions by copying someone else’s work! All deletions should be your own, original work.

     

     

    but, damn, if that got deleted, how have I not got one by now?!

  17. The Green Man says SACK THE Board on

    MIT

     

     

    We need the odd controversy on CQN, otherwise we would all be agreeing about everything. And we cant have that:)

     

    That’s where my deleted/censored posts come in:)

     

     

    HH

  18. mike in toronto on

    TGM … there is something comforting to know that, even today, a few of George Carlin’s 7 words would still get you deleted if not banned on CQN … in an ever changing world, it is nice to know that something never change!

     

     

    :)

  19. Mike

     

    I’ve never had one and don’t expect to ever get one, unless Theresa May ever logs on as a guest celebrity to take on a “question time” type debate.

     

     

    I’ll certainly get a deletion for my question, the answer to which would be ” I don’t think my manifesto will fit in there”

  20. The Green Man says SACK THE Board on

    MIT

     

     

    Whatever you do, dont mention Erasmus or Mauro Biglino:)

     

    And steer clear of slagging certain well known executives with dubious motives, that doesnt go down well:)

     

     

    HH

  21. The Green Man says SACK THE Board on

    Be fun when the new Sevco players from Portugal,Columbia, and Mexico, discover that their own supporters hate them because the are kaffliks:)

     

    Should do wonders for team bonding:)

     

     

    HH

  22. Dallas Dallas where the heck is Dallas on

    Bobby, your post at 8.55 ths morning about that Wishart character from the SPFA , was spot on.

     

     

    He is the main SPFA guy for show racism the red card but was noticably schtum when Neil and Aiden were getting racially abused and did the same when Scott Sinclair received the ‘treatment ‘ at Ibrox .

  23. Tiny Tim

     

    Yeah it’s actually coming along quite quickly. It’s odd. I thought I’d work until at least 65, maybe 70.

     

     

    No specific incident has accelerated my decision to go at 60, I simply started to feel enough was enough and there’s a lot of things I want to do, so 60 it is. I won’t change my mind and won’t work a day beyond December next year.