I noticed our new signing doesn't have his own thread and after having a chat with an old mate who previously worked at the FoL and still has connections at the club, I thought I'd share bits and pieces of what I was told about the player.
I was told the player is an anomaly, most of the best young talents in Ivory Coast go through a relatively small number of academies, the most famous is that of ASEC Mimosa, you might consider them the Manchester United of the Ivory Coast and the other prominent ones are usually ran by ex-international players or are affiliates (ie funded) of European clubs, mostly in France and Belgium. It's actually very rare that players who do not get selected by one of these top academies make it out of Ivory Coast. Sometimes family connections can help, this is why it's not unusually to find African players in Europe who are cousins.
The player was deemed too small and not good enough quite early whilst with JC Abidjan and was subsequently allowed to leave, instead of dropping down into the domestic football leagues he was able to travel to Israel and get a trial with a small club due to having a cousin (haha) playing in Israel. Apparently due to not being at a proper academy the player was extremely raw and was more comparable to a street footballer or a skills exhibition than an actual 11v11 footballer with tactics and positioning etc
Interestingly this is said to be a phenomenon across West Africa, it is suggested that there might be thousands of potential top class footballers that are untrained and never develop beyond a "skills school" type of football and that if they were to be given more access to coaching they could make it to more pominent football leagues.
Back to Ta Bi, fast forward and he signs with a bigger club in Israel due to his exploits in youth football and is subsequently loaned out to a second tier side to learn about tactics and positional sense and over time pulls some record breaking numbers, apparently his 1v1 data (taking on defenders) is unlike anything that has been noted since data was taken.
So here we are, £3.5m later with this rough, uncut diamond, the next challenge is to cut and polish.
I was told the player is an anomaly, most of the best young talents in Ivory Coast go through a relatively small number of academies, the most famous is that of ASEC Mimosa, you might consider them the Manchester United of the Ivory Coast and the other prominent ones are usually ran by ex-international players or are affiliates (ie funded) of European clubs, mostly in France and Belgium. It's actually very rare that players who do not get selected by one of these top academies make it out of Ivory Coast. Sometimes family connections can help, this is why it's not unusually to find African players in Europe who are cousins.
The player was deemed too small and not good enough quite early whilst with JC Abidjan and was subsequently allowed to leave, instead of dropping down into the domestic football leagues he was able to travel to Israel and get a trial with a small club due to having a cousin (haha) playing in Israel. Apparently due to not being at a proper academy the player was extremely raw and was more comparable to a street footballer or a skills exhibition than an actual 11v11 footballer with tactics and positioning etc
Interestingly this is said to be a phenomenon across West Africa, it is suggested that there might be thousands of potential top class footballers that are untrained and never develop beyond a "skills school" type of football and that if they were to be given more access to coaching they could make it to more pominent football leagues.
Back to Ta Bi, fast forward and he signs with a bigger club in Israel due to his exploits in youth football and is subsequently loaned out to a second tier side to learn about tactics and positional sense and over time pulls some record breaking numbers, apparently his 1v1 data (taking on defenders) is unlike anything that has been noted since data was taken.
So here we are, £3.5m later with this rough, uncut diamond, the next challenge is to cut and polish.
