As I thought. No wrongdoing, just NEC spitting their dummy out because Seelt would rather go to Wolfsburg.
Only if you name a squad of 25 'over age of 21' players. If you name a squad of 24, you only need 7 'domestic'. Then if you name a squad of 23, you only need 6 'domestic'. And so on. Talbi, Mayenda, Rigg & Sadiki (plus a few others) don't need to be named in the squad as they're under 21.
Sunderland summer signing Robin Roefs has admitted he’s entered a different world with his move to the Black Cats NU have comments from the goalkeeper today as he’s linked up with the Netherlands squad for this international break. It’s been a busy summer for the 22-year-old, who joined Sunderland in a €10.5m deal at the beginning of last month after impressing at Dutch side NEC Nijmegen. He only made 42 appearances for them in total after coming through their youth ranks, featuring at U17, U18, U19 and U21 level for the club over the years. He made his debut in the first team in 2023 and two years later is now a Premier League footballer, starting the season as Sunderland’s number one. He’s also been called up to the Netherlands squad by Ronald Koeman, where he will be third choice after Bart Verbruggen and Mark Flekken. It’s a rapid rise, to say the least for the youngster, who is having to take a lot in his stride early on after such a busy few months. Fortunately, he’s been helped in that regard by Sunderland, who it seems go out of their way to make their new recruits as comfortable as possible. “Quality always rises to the top but sometimes in football you have to be lucky enough for everything to fall into place,” he said. “That’s what happened this summer. It was such a great moment when I heard what clubs were interested in me. But it turned out to be Sunderland, a club in the best league in the world. And now I’m also with the Dutch national team. If you’d told me that three months ago, I wouldn’t have believed it. “I don’t think they knew who I was in the dressing room. I also didn’t expect to go from NEC to a Premier League club. I’ve entered a different world. “The club has three team managers to take care of everything for you. If there aren’t any more, that’s it. That allowed me to quickly focus on football, and that worked out well. From the first practice matches, things went well. “It also made it easier for me, as an unknown player, to integrate into the new group of players. I couldn’t have wished for a better start.”
They do but with U21 not being registered it can leave gaps in the squad and therefore less required to be registered that are domestic
I’m interested to know the specifics as I think that Copley is incorrect in multiple areas in his article. I suspect it’s like u21 tournaments where you need to be 21 or under on a specific date - usually 1st of Jan. I think that we can name all of our senior pros (including the bomb squad) if we wish to, assuming that is correct. Roefs and Mundle make that cut in that case, for instance. What interests me further is the hg rule. Stuff like is Hjelde home grown. He’s had three seasons, but hasn’t had three full years before his 21st birthday. Copley said Hume counts as hg but that surely can’t be true. So I’ll be interested when I see the list. The hg list is where we’ve probably got the first challenge in future years.
"As far as the relative aggression or ambition financially between Leeds and Sunderland [goes], as a sports business nerd, they are fascinating, duelling case studies. Sunderland has, in my view, the perfect storm, in a good way, of creating PSR room between the combination of, as far as I'm aware, little or no operating loss [during the] last two seasons, very low wage bill, gets promoted, sells their top talents for tens of millions. "They are effectively carrying no prior losses and a player sale profit into the Premier League, where they've also a 48,000 stadium waiting for them to sell out every game. Those conditions have never existed in the history of PSR. "My guess is Sunderland has the highest cap room in the history of PSR, and they have been very aggressive in that, which they deserve a lot of credit for. That happened as a part of their long-term plan, building up from the youth movement.
Interesting that we’ve forced Leeds to have to try to explain the difference in approach. The question of quite how aggressive we’ve been is one that will become clear in time. Hopefully what Speakman said the other day gives us good indication. The danger of maxing out was always that you can’t have a ‘perfect storm’ each year. With the amortisation costs we’ve added we’re likely to make losses going forward. Thankfully the fact that we look to have not gone as far as we could have this year should mean that we’re not under undue pressure to sell in future windows. That flexibility is critical going forward. We can then take advantage if big sales do arrive - rather than having to sell to keep heads above water.
We’ll never have a window like this again provided we stay up, will always be adding little bits of quality mixed in with the inevitable sales when vultures circle
