Terriers pair suffer defeat during their internationals
THERE was frustration for Huddersfield Town duo Juninho Bacuna and Flo Hadergjonaj on the international stage.
While Bacuna played the full 90 minutes for Curacao against Costa Rica in their CONCACAF Nations League group game, his side went down 2-1 to a goal six minutes from time.
Bacuna played in right central midfield in a 4-4-2 formation, with his brother Leandro playing at left centre-back.
And Hadergjonaj was substituted by Kosovo just two minutes before the Czech Republic netted their crucial winner for a 2-1 success to guarantee qualification for the finals.
Kosovo, who play goal-laden England on Sunday, can now qualify only through the play-offs.
In Curacao, Bacuna, his brother Leandro and their team-mates went behind to a 14th-minute penalty from Costa Rica’s Johan Venegas before Rangelo Janga levelled on 20 minutes.
Costa Rica had Ricardo Bianco sent off with 26 minutes still to play, but they managed to grab the winner six minutes from time through Francisco Calvo.
Costa Rica and Curacao both now have five points at the top of Group D, but Costa Rica have a game in hand against bottom side Haiti.
At the Doosan Arena in Pizen, the Czech Republic moved themselves a vital four points clear with their 2-1 success over Hadergjonaj’s Kosovo.
Hadergjonaj started on the wide right of midfield in a 4-2-3-1 formation and was taken off after 77 minutes, with the score 1-1.
That result would have been good enough to keep Kosovo’s automatic qualification hopes alive but, just two minutes later, Ondrej Celustka netted for the Czech side to ruin those hopes.
Atdhe Nuhiu of Sheffield Wednesday had put Kosovo ahead before Alex Kral equalised on 71 minutes.
HUDDERSFIELD Town believe they are starting to reap the benefits of their huge academy revamp.
In September 2017, while the club were making a successful start in the Premier League, then chairman Dean Hoyle decided to pull the plug on the long-established youth setup.
The restructure involved scrapping the age-group teams and focusing on Under 18 and Under 23 squads, moving from Category 2 to Category 4 in the Elite Player Performance Plan in the process.
It was a painful decision at the time but made with the clear intention of creating a stronger pathway for young players to the first team.
Town have also made a conscious effort to recruit players at the younger end of each age range, leading to the most recent first-team contract and call-up for striker Kian Harratt under new manager Danny Cowley.
The 17-year-old Harratt has signed a first pro contract until June 2021 and has been on the senior bench for the last two Championship games against Brentford and Preston North End.
Town product Ryan Schofield has been in the senior squad all season, while the likes of Lewis O’Brien and
Jaden Brown - signed from Tottenham to develop in the Under 23s - have broken through impressively.
It’s a point not lost on new director David Threlfall-Sykes.
“The model is different but if you do the same as everyone else, particularly some of the clubs around us, it will be hard for us to challenge,” said Threlfall-Sykes.
“I’d never be an advocate of every club doing the same thing. I think in every area you have to do what’s right for your club. Each club is different and this is a model that everyone believes in at our club.
“Yes, it is different and at the time we made the decision it wasn’t a universally popular decision ... we expected that, we’re not naive to that.
“As Leigh (Bromby, academy manager) has said, the easier option would have been to leave things as they were; the braver option was to change it and I think Dean (Hoyle) showed during his tenure that he’d make brave decisions when they were right.
“As long as you can justify why you’ve done that I think that’s fine.”
Speaking on BBC Radio Leeds’ West Yorkshire Sport Daily, Threlfall-Sykes continued: “Ultimately we’re a community club and we’ve made that clear, but an Academy is an elite football programme, it’s not a community programme.
“The Town Foundation coaches thousands of kids in our area every month and in terms of football we still have that kind of community outreach.
“This is a thing to try and provide footballers at an elite level for our first team that’s playing in the C h a mpi o n s h i p and has just played in the Premier League and the way that we’ve gone about this is with a view to try and do that successfully.
“You look at the most recent examples of people who have been a success at our club to do that and it’s Phillip Billing and Tommy Smith.
“They were recruited at the level that we are now operating exclusively in and Phillip is a tremendous success story, you have to say.
“He came to this club at 16 for a relatively small amount of money from Danish football, progressed
I think Dean Hoyle showed during his tenure that he’d make
brave decisions