The difference between positive insolence and insolence probably depends on how good you are at what you do. Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s self-flight, for example, would not be supported if he was not such a good player. This is perhaps the story of Patrick Kalimelathe striker who concluded today (Sunday) in Hapoel Beer Sheva.
On the one hand, this is a high-profile player. Moved to Celtic and New York Red Bulls, only 24 years old, sold twice for more than 4 million euros and has the highest value in Israel according to “Transfermarkt” after the departure of Oskar Gloch. On the face of it, an actor. On the other hand, he did not score more than eight goals in a season in a senior league, earned the image of a slouch and did not start in the lineup of a soccer team since October.
He was marked at a young age as a promising striker with a flair for goals, but at the same time caused headaches for the coaches and was even called “the devil” in his youth team. It was enough to help him reach Celtic at the age of 21, but leave it after a season and a half for MLS. The New York Red Bulls paid about $5 million for him and released him two years later. So what does Hapoel Beer Sheva deserve?
Striker Patryk Klimala switches to preferred shirt number 9 (unavailable last season) and recognizes importance of improving on total of 8 goals in first @MLS season. “I had two chances to give us the lead (in playoff versus Union) and did not.” Hints at better 2022. pic.twitter.com/a9RUxzqndj
— Steve Cangialosi (@CangyManMSG) February 5, 2022
The “devil” and the drought
As mentioned, Kalimela was marked from an early stage. He went through the Polish youth teams and even scored 3 goals for the under-21 team in which he was a team player for a short period, and it seems that his career is heading in the right direction. “Ambitious, aggressive and self-confident. He caused a lot of problems for opposing defenses and his coaches,” it was written about him in “Sports facts” The Polish. “From childhood he was energetic and noisy, problematic at school and not one to hesitate to talk back to the teachers.” Therefore, it is believed in Poland, he lost his place at the Legia Academy in Warsaw, which he entered at the age of 16 and left at the age of 18.
“They told me they wanted to loan me, but we decided we didn’t want to continue with them and canceled the contract in Belgium,” Kalimela said himself. In Poland, they were sure that this was a positive life lesson for him: “He learned from the story of Belgium and the return to his hometown. He changed his energy and became a mature man, talented enough to move to Celtic.”
There were disturbing incidents even then. For example, he was sent off in a friendly match where he scored a hat-trick against Olympiakos, was caught drunk in the club at the age of 17 and in other incidents, but was good enough to get to Celtic. He testified himself that he has matured and will fight for the place in Celtic, but the short term in the team was not successful.
Celtic have sent many players to the Premier League, including attacking players, and a central striker like Kalimela would have been a suitable target. He himself suffered from bad luck and a sharp change in status, from the star of the team to a player at the end of the bench, and played only fifteen minutes before the corona epidemic. A little before that, he testified that he turned down an offer from Copenhagen for Celtic, in a move that caused an unusual denial message from the club who admitted that they had not even heard of him.
Even after this bizarre incident, he tried to take his place at Celtic, but the various circumstances were against him. Also the corona virus, in which he lived for the first time in his life in a foreign country, also the presence of better strikers than him, the method of play and the fact that he simply did not prove himself with the Hoops. Shocking mistakes in the games in which he did play led to the fact that he started only three times in the lineup for the team that bought him for 4 million euros.
Although he showed impressive self-discipline during the epidemic, in which he gained 3.5 kg of muscle, he had a very difficult time on the field. “Spending so much money on him was strange from the beginning, the scouting reports did not show enthusiasm,” they wrote at the time in “Athletic“, while in Scotland the move was defined as a “panic signing”. Similar to what happened in the youth of Legia, here too he was swallowed up. After three goals and 4 games in the team in the league and in Europe, he was sold to the New York Red Bulls.
The move to MLS and the Red Bulls, part of the Red Bull team (along with Oskar Gloch’s Leipzig and Salzburg), seems like a good move. The American League receives a talent that can show potential even if swallowed by Celtic, he comes to one of the most successful club chains in the world, but the results were complex there as well. In the first season he scored 8 goals and assisted six more, not bad numbers, but was criticized by the Red Bulls fans.
Some defended him. B-“Once a metro“, the team’s fan site from “SB Nation”, believed that “although a team needs a striker who scores at a higher rate than Kalimela, but he does more than score goals. He has a good presence in the area and speed along with game wisdom that allows his teammates to score, and he is significant in the pressure game. Even if the goals are not amazing, he is not the team’s problem and can create situations out of nothing.” In the following season, Kalimela once again lost his place in the lineup, and was actually kicked out of the team that paid 4.3 million euros for him. He comes after a period in which he did not score or assist in 13 consecutive games At the Red Bulls.
What does he know how to do?
Despite what has been written, Kalimela, on the face of it, could be a tremendous drain on Hapoel Beer Sheva. Although he hasn’t played regular football since October and in the times when he wasn’t the main striker in the hierarchy, he looked bad, but in the first season at Red Bulls (involved in a goal every 150 minutes in a better league than the Israeli league) and in the half season in Poland before moving to Celtic, he looked very good. The BS crowd really liked Josua, and maybe a similar hug to Kalmilla would do everyone involved good.
Hapoel BS has Dor Micha, Shafi Sulaimanov and Rotem Hatuel, but it needs a classic striker. One who will make life difficult for the defenders, score goals and help his teammates. On the face of it, this is what Kalimela should bring to the team. He functioned in New York as a goal striker and is considered A physical player, who was even called a “security guard” by his friends at Celtic. At 1.83 m tall, he may have an advantage over the players in Israel, and the move from the physical leagues of Scotland and the United States to the Premier League may do him good in this aspect. Not a tank like Frantezdi Piero, but a player similar in dimensions to Djorja Jovanovic (1.87 m, 79 kg).
Although he is different from Jovanovic, but like him he is considered an extremely fast player who knows how to draw the opponents towards him. He has a good passing ability and this is reflected in his cooking. His ability to release the ball with a touch after the defense focuses on him is significant. He manages to press and “run over” other brakes, something that can yield goals in our league.
In the minutes when he will play next to Hatuel, for example, the latter may especially benefit from the presence of a big striker next to him, but his misses may keep sleep from their eyes. Analysts like to use the expected goals metric, xG, to show a player’s scoring quality. This metric has almost no meaning in a single game, but throughout entire seasons it indicates a trend: how much this player scores compared to an average player who reaches his situations. In Calimela’s case, the answer is very troubling. In two years he has 14 goals and 24 expected goals, which indicates a not amazing scoring ability, to say the least.
At the same time, he had a number of big misses at Celtic as well, including bad penalties or situations that would make any football fan cry. This is something that can also happen to fans in Turner, but on the face of it it seems that this is not a bad signing at all for Hapoel Beer Sheva. His physicality is a big advantage, and the club has already shown us that it manages to get the best out of various strikers.
Despite this, he didn’t really show anything significant in his senior career. A good half season in Poland and a season with solid numbers in MLS is nice, but not sure enough for a player who arrives after half a season without football and joins the team in the championship fight. The signing of Kalimela on a contract for two and a half years indicates that he may be a long-term solution, and his connection with the various playmakers of BS can make him a big X-factor, certainly considering the current form of Maccabi Haifa. The risk is not particularly high, but the potential profit is in the sky.