Arsenal are set to open negotiations with Hajduk Split in a bid to prize away 15-year-old Ivan Džoni, according to the players father. Vilson Džoni claims first-team coach Boro Primorac has been in touch and signalled the club’s imminent interest in signing the Croatian Under 17 captain.
Vilson, who is a coach and part time scout at Hajduk, has left any potential deal down to the two clubs, but he would prefer his son to remain in Croatia. First-team opportunities have already been promised if Ivan continues his rapid rate of development.
“I was very surprised when the national team manager Ivan Gudelj told me that Boro Primorac has called him to talk about my son, and how Arsenal wants to open talks with Hajduk to sign Ivan. Sure, we are very flattered by interest of such a huge club, but we would like him to stay here at Hajduk and make a name for himself.”
“If Hajduk finds it’s own interest in selling Ivan to Arsenal, then we will consider it.”
Džoni is pacy striker who can play as either a penalty box poacher, or in a more creative role just behind a number 9. At 5’9 he may not be the tallest, but Ivan has been noted for his power in the air. Arsenal are believed to be keen to offer a three year scholarship contract with the option of a sell on clause to Hajduk.
Croatian football is certainly on the rise and with a selection of talented youngsters making moves, most notably with Inter Milan and Dinamo Zagreb snapping up prospects, prices are on the increase in Europe.
http://www.uefa.com/under17/teams/player=250016771/index.html
I dont think this transfer will happen since his parents dont want him to leave but I think we can use a quality striker like him in our team.
Boro Primorac used to play for Hajduk Split and he still has great connection with the club and I think if a transfer is too happen then Boro will have to convince Ivan’s parent that Arsenal is the best club for him. I dont think signing fees will be a problem.
If he is a success then opposition fan will probably name him Ivan the Terrible
Pingback: Tweets that mention Arsenal Poised To Open Talks Over Striker Dzoni | Young Guns - Arsenal Reserves & Youth News -- Topsy.com
lol, if he is a failure he will probably be called “Ivan the Terrible” too
true its a universal name
don’t we have an excess of strikers in the youth squads now; guess u18 its ok…but the u18s thus year, with the ones in reserves now and Roberts and Silva in
it never hurts to have the best strikers in your youth rank
who knows who might go on to become the best striker in europe
We have had so many strikers in our youth rank but Bendtner is only one to come out of it and actually make it and at the age of 15 he looks just the right age to blend in and if he’s half good as much people hype about him then he has a pretty good chance of making it.
Great another foreigner hopefully hes can play as a winger or whats the point.
ur a bigget
It was Arsenal who interested in him nnot another way around.. you spuuuddd
The words you were looking for weren’t necessarily biggot. Blind idiocy is closer. Lack of faith should be accounted. If the boy looks like he should be given a chance, then why not. Only spur the current prospects on.
thank god for a nothe talented hardworking foreginer. Not an arrogant twat like alot of the English…
fuck sake can’t we produce our own english strikers
always going abroad to scout the talent
Aneke, Wilshere, Lansbury, Afobe, Freeman, Bartley, JET, Eastmond all these are english players
and we have spend a huge amount of money on Walcott an english talent
I dont understand why people differentiate between english and foriegn players and isnt football supposed to be an universal sport?
If you had the chance of signing Messi when he was young would you say no I doubt it
Arsenal should be all about buying the best players and if its a foriegn player then so be it
Terrific, another ill-informed bigot! While you’re on this great site, why don’t you have a little read through the player profile section and educate yourself about all the terrific British talent coming through the academy?
Dzoni sounds like an interesting prospect, and at 15 he could yet grow a few inches. Keep up the good work J!
Come on nw ppl! Arsenal hs fans and is loved world wide. I dnt knw y ppl should b xenophobic about who plays 4 arsenal!!
So true. If Arsenal fans want Arsenal to become / stay a true great club, having non-English players is almost a must. It is only as a world recognizable name Arsenal can compete with the currently most famous clubs (Real Madrid, Barcelona, Manchester United, Inter,…). Arsenal is among the biggest in England but is still a second tier club world wide.
Maybe people are getting a little upset because Arsenal is a distinctly ENGLISH club, from the capital of ENGLAND…a club that English fans may want to associate with based on the foundations upon which the club was founded. Not from another first XI full of people plucked from all around the world. Yes, I understand that football is a global sport, but how does one truly identify with a club of “where they’re from” if none of the players were even born and raised on home soil? Let’s not throw around the “bigot” tag before seeing the reality behind it. English fans want English players, and damn well right they should. Up the 3 Lions.
We may be an “ENGLISH club” AG but when did we ever win anything with only English players?
I’ve only been following Arsenal since the mid 60’s but even back then we had a fair sprinkling of foreign players – Bob Wilson, Pat Jennings, Willie Young, Pat Rice, the incomparable Frankie McLintock, John Roberts, Eddie Kelly etc. etc. Get your head out of your backside and support the club as it has been for years, not some imaginary little englander dream.
NBG your correct to a ceratin extent however people find it easier to relate to great british players such as the ones you’ve named over croatian players (for example) history due to our history, links etc. if it was possible to chose mostly english players and still be as competitive as we are wouldnt you choose that? people look for role models within teams and a big part of that is how easily they can relate to them
GREAT!! just what we need. With the signing of this geezer and Kyle Ebecilio, next season the world will be ours : )
I for one am happy that the club is scouring the globe, including the oft neglected Balkan region, for talent. We are known for our prudent and sensible approach to team building/spending so if we have to find young talents and nurture them then so be it. That goes for English players as well since most of those available on the market are overpriced and overrated.
I don’t have a problem with this signing at all. We need talent wherever we can get it from right?? If all the big clubs were after this dude and we got him, then we one-upped them all right?? No need to look at his passport from my viewpoint. We have enough talented young British players. And for those of you who think JET can’t make it, I have some news for you!!! I think that he can!! He has a lot, and I mean a lot of talent. He’s versatile, and he has a lot of talent. He can do it and I hope he does. This is my favourite site J!!!:D
I just dont understand arsenal youth policy. I thought we had a 10 year plan of producing british players. I understood foreign players would improve British players as well but now its getting ridicolous we seem to be buying young foreign players in order for them to be home grown then picked ahead of the british players.
I have nothing against foreigners its just that they are not loyal and say Barcelona or Real madrid come in for them they will go at first shot.
The ‘loyalty argument’ is always trotted out but doesn’t stand up.
Was Ashley Cole more loyal than Henry?
Was Bentley more loyal than Bergkamp?
Was Pennant more loyal than Ljungberg, or Pires, or Gilberto, I could go on….
Loyalty has nothing do with nationality.
You think after 10years all the youngsters suddenly starts playing for the 1st team. They were 8 or 9 at the time joined arsenal and after 10years at the age 18,19 you really think they are going to play every first team game. I hate to say it, but even man united’s golden generation started playing together regularly at 21 and their best player scholes broke into the team only at 22. Only giggs started for them at 16 or 17 age.
But here everyone wants our players to be regular at the age of 18, it’s ridiculous. If any then wilshere is the only one who can cement a place in the team at this age. Others need another year or two to become regular. But our future looks bright with talented English youngsters, bartley, gibbs, lansbury, JET, eastmond and even randall as a squad player( bcoz i like him).
So don’t just go and talk like our youth policy is a failure and not producing anything.
Do people there are a greater percentage of overseas players because these make the headlines i.e. would “Arsenal sign 15 year old from god forsaken northern town” be as glamourous compared to a boy from South America. I do feel a club needs a loyality and spirit but as Wrenny above says Henry, Bergkamp and co are as much Arsenals “DNA” as Wrighty or Big Tony. Sorry for the DNA bit – stolen from the Barca handbook of illegal tapping up 2010 edition
Coming from the USA, I’ll admit that I don’t know how things are in England. But, it seems to me that most kids start playing the game because they love it and first want to play for their local team or their favorite team. In England you have four really big clubs with a lot of money, but also a host of other clubs with great traditions (some of them also have money as well, though less than the Big Four). That means that you have a lot of domestic competition for young English talent–in addition to the interest that other international giants might have in them–and that drives up their prices and makes it harder to sign, even for the Big Four clubs.
While other countries may have big clubs that are on the same level as the Big Four and even have more money to splash, there are fewer of those clubs in each country. While there may be teams with great local traditions in some of the poorer countries, the fact is that there are very few clubs in these countries that have the kind of resources that a club like Arsenal has and their domestic leagues can’t offer the level of competition or glory that playing in the EPL does. There is little or no domestic competition for a young player who has the potential to play for a top international club if one shows an interest in him. The only real competition comes from one of the other big, rich clubs.
We all know about the battles that have raged between the big clubs to sign the most highly rated youngsters, but there are a lot of talented youngsters in some of these poorer countries that maybe only one or two of the big clubs will go after (sometimes the club that makes contact with a kid and his club will be able to sign him before any of the other big clubs contact him simply because he/his family/his agent/or local club is flattered by the fact that a big club wants him or because he/they are afraid to turn the club down).
The result is that it may be easier for a big English club like Arsenal to sign a young foreign player with as much or more potential as an English youngster than it would be for them to sign a comparable young English talent. And, the talent pool in the rest of the world is, as should be quite obvious, simply much larger than the talent pool in England alone.
For a big club like Arsenal to maintain its position as one of the top clubs in the world, there must be a constant stream of the best available young talent into its development system. Because Arsenal cannot count on always getting most or all of the very best young English talent from year to year (for the reasons I cited above) and will lose out on as many of the top-rated young foreign players that it must fight the other big clubs for as it gets, the club’s scouts (and the scouts’ contacts) have to scour the world for the best available kids that they can find that the club may have a chance to sign.
Winning depends on having talent. It doesn’t matter where the talent comes from. If the next Messi or Pele is kicking a ball around in the snows of northern Canada or the grasslands of Outer Mongolia, what matters is that he has the talent to become the next Messi or Pele, not where he comes from. And, I’d much rather have an Arsenal scout find him and sign him before someone from one of the other big, international clubs does. And I hate to say it, but I’d rather have Arsenal spend its money on signing him than spend it on a lesser talented English kid (no matter how much hype he has gotten in the English press).
Now, I know that being English and from London, the capital of a great country and the country that invented the game, you would love to have Arsenal sign and develop great young English players. That would be great in my eyes, too. But, I don’t want prejudice or xenophobia to cloud the club’s judgement and prevent it from bringing in as many of the best young talents as its scouts can find–regardless of where they come from.
As an American, coming from the NYC area, I wish that we had a top-flight, world-class club here that was composed of world-class American players. We don’t have such a club. We used to have a pretty famous club, the Cosmos, but it was almost entirely composed of foreign players. Now, all we have is the MLS. But, none of that stopped me and my wife from being passionate Cosmos fans. Nor did it stop me from finding a club elsewhere in the world–in north London to be exact–that I could fall in love with and give my support to. Why am I an Arsenal fan–a fan of a foreign (to me) club–and not a fan of the MetroStars/Red Bulls? Because I know talent when I see it and the talent of the players and the level of competition at Arsenal is far superior to what any American team (or most American players) can offer.
It’s about the talent and the competition, not about the country. Maybe someday there will be an American Messi/Pele and a great American club, but I’m an Arsenal fan and if there ever is an American Messi/Pele, I hope he plays for the Gunners. And, I hope that you will want him to play for Arsenal, too! (And, if there’s an English Messi/Pele I pray to God that Arsenal signs him instead of ManUre, Spuds, L’vrpoodles, Chelski, Barca or Real Mudrid! I don’t care where the next Messi/Pele is from, I just want him playing in an Arsenal shirt.)
Well Said AmericanGunnerFan, you seem to know a lot more about football than many of the English guys around here.
Those who think we should be buying English only talent need to realise that if we were to do that we would miss out on many of the worlds most talented players and end up losing our position as a top club. Talent isn’t limited to North London, nor is it limited to England or Britain. In order to be a top club, we need the best talent from all over the world, just like all the other top clubs. If however you wish for Arsenal to become a mediocre club, then we should stick with local talent, just like many other mediocre clubs do.
WHEN WE SHOULD HAVE BEEN TALKING ABOUT DZONI
we are talking about racism
how stupid is that
J is Dzoni a Striker or a midfielder?
Uefa doesnt always get the player position right but it think Dzoni is a midfielder
the article clearly states his playing position
“Džoni is pacy striker who can play as either a penalty box poacher, or in a more creative role just behind a number 9. At 5’9 he may not be the tallest, but Ivan has been noted for his power in the air.”
buying talented young players is not a big deal…..
but when the talanted young players grow they want to play with top quality world class players…. if you want our players to stay then our first team needs to win trophies like barca…only then will our young talent not go away from us……
we need to get experienced world class players into our first team…..
if we will have a new henrdy or fabregas in our youth squads they will definately not want to play with players like denielson or diaby…..
we have a very good history and our future looks very good as well …. but our present team is jus not good enough and due to this our yong talented players may end up with clubs like brca, inter, chelsea,etc…and that way our future may get screwed as well …. so we should sort out the first team first…….
you know what people like you forget is that Barca went six year without a trophy and we have only gone five
you also forget that we had a stadium debt to pay in the world financial crisis since the great depression. We current owe somewhere around 180-150 million Barca owes 460 million after villa purchase
we also have the youngest team in the EPL and why wont young players want to play with Fabregas, Van Persie, Vermaelen, Clichy, Song, Arshavin
Future isnt screwed because you think its screwed. Chelsea and City have a billionaire behind them, Inter cant even afford Masherano forget about Fab or Van Persie,madrid has been saved from bankruptcy twice and Barca have a huge debt that they will have to clear.
So you either think about the future and win trophies now or keep improving your team year by year while keeping a healthy financial outlook
He scored 4 goals in 5 caps for Croatioan U17…He is a good stiker for his age…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croatia_national_under-17_football_team#Players
dont forget xavi inesta didnt play in the champions league final in 2006 they were on the bench they werent good enough and the barcelona system only plays players when they are at their peak so stop complaning about it fabregas is way better than xavi and inesta right now and at his age so we have a brighter future than barca and our kids will play and not need to pay 40 mil and eto for a player like zlatan
he staretd to play for barca in 2004 when he was 24 correct my mistake about being on bench coz of peak but its still true
correct it again 2000 really bad day for me need to go doctors about memory
Barcelona produce spanish youngsters and promote them.
Arsenal are a British club we should not be producing brazilians, croatians, spanish , dutch, turkish players just look at spanish clubs, french clubs, italian clubs most of thier youth players are italian
French, spanish, etc. Its only in England especially chelsea, Arsenal there are too many foreign players.
Whats the point of having a youth system when we just buy young players abroad
we will buy him for what 0.5 million max if he makes it then great
if he doesnt we can sell or release him
and still make money
most of our youth players are english
would you stop crying about foriegn some of our best players have been foriegn
henry, brekhamp, Fabregas just to name a few
How hard is it to understand?….there are far more talented footballing spanish kids then Englsih ones. How many English players play our style? You are seeing a few come through now but you are not bright if you think the whole youth team should be all english players.
those who can’t believe in wenger and arsenal and those who can’t support arsenal should not come on this site
great work j
Amit from Mauritius
i think that this guy is very good …in the feautre he will be like eduardo before his injury
JS Havard Nordtveit do you have is actual height?
I also think Nordvteit has got a great chance of breaking through i just hope hes has bulked up and in pre season starts to show some physical power
he’s 6’2
good height and a good phsyique
any idea when Norvedit contract expies?
http://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/en/h%C3%A5vard-nordtveit/profil/spieler_42234.html
this says 2010
I hate these english fans with there ‘ Oh why are we buying more foreigners when we should be playing more english players’, answer is simple, Arsenal don’t want to become like your national side – shite. At least foreign players bring flair and that bit of class
Agree – if people want to see a team full of English players rewind back to the mid 90s when our midfield consisted of the likes of Adrian Clarke, David Hillier, Ian Selley and Mark Flatts. Cannot deny that foreign players have improved the standard of football we watch in the Premier League.
I for one want to see the best players turn out for Arsenal be they from Islington, Italy or India. Yes an Arsenal team full of players born within a stone’s throw would be great but football has moved on.
Pingback: [Rate The Rumour] Arsenal Transfer Rumours, 26/06 – Ivan Dzoni and Sami Khedira | Arsenal Blog & Arsenal News
To all people that complain about Arsenal signing young foreign players over English players…..when will you realize Wenger does this because a lack of english talent. It is that simple. There are a few good ones but no an abundance of top class talent. Here is an interesting fact for you. In last years champions league, there were 15 english players and 115 brazilians. That should tell you enough.
If anyone wants a english team, than i suggest you support Tottenham or aston villa.
Arsene and the so called WONDERKIDS kept us wondering why KIDS. Arsene should invest more on the first team if we are too win any trophy
This is a youth team blog. Go somewhere else
It is funny how Arsenal has already acquired the services of one English 15-16 y.o. striker in Phillip Roberts, from Norwich, but there’s people on here in an outrage that we “might” acquire another who happens to not be from the British Isles as clear evidence of an anti-British bias at the club. The logic of that argument is a bit confusing.
well all you english-players-elitist can rejoice a little, cause his last name Džoni; is Johnny in Croatian writing ;D and his father name Vilson, is the Croatian version of Wilson.
As one of the best clubs in the world Arsenal should be buying the best players. Whether that player is English, Spanish, German, or whatever. We should find the best youngsters to develop with that same mindset-that they’re the best youngsters regardless of where they’re from. If the squad is gonna perform better and have a higher chance of capturing silverware with players of all origins rather than mostly English players then so be it. It’s easy to start this argument since we clearly haven’t won anything lately (1st team), but once we start winning everyone here won’t really argue this anymore. If we do win the Champions League and/or EPL and you’re still complaining that we won without big English talent, then frankly you should probably go support another club.
England ‘s exit from the World cup shows that England players are talent enought.
England top players could not keep the ball from young Germans,
The only two players in the England team that would go in the German team are Ashley Cole and Joe Cole. The rest lacks technique and/or vision. They compensate by physicality and speed. However against good team stamina and desire is not enough.
Arsenal is starting producing good youngsters (JET, Lansbury, Wilshere, … are the proof of that), however it cannot churn out players of the quality of Messi or Iniesta every year at every position.
That where the recrutment of youngster come into play. By getting them young, they get accustomed to the way we want to play. They are also more likely to accept an extra year on the fringe that an established player bought at 27 years old.
Dzoni could be the next big striker that Arsenal needs.
For englands sake, they need to start selling english players to arsenal. England plays with no fluidity and creativity at all. Jack Wilshere will lead the new generation. I truly believe that Arsenal will actually save English football. No we will never have a full english squad but when we produce english players, they will bring the right football that they need. Guys like Wilshere, Aneke, and Gibbs will be able to play quality football and add a spark that england lacks.
I don’t know if Arsenal will “save English football”, but I think that the addition of some young players who can bring some of the fluidity, creativity and teamwork that typify Arsenal’s game would help the England team because those were some of the most obvious qualities missing from this squad.
Far be it from me, as an American, to tell the English how to play their game, but, however difficult it might be (and I don’t underestimate how difficult it would be), IMHO, less of an emphasis on putting big-name individuals on the pitch and more of an emphasis on putting together a team of players who can mesh together into a unit (that would then allow the team to be more fluid and creative) might go a long way to making England more competitive in the WC–which is why I would hesitate to specify which young Arsenal players are best suited to be in the England squad in 2014 (although I have some ideas regarding who I would like to see given a chance to make the squad).
Roberts is Irish…not English…or has opted to play for Ireland, should I say.