Newcastle U FC
Newcastle hit the VIFA top 3!
Written 27 November 2022, 14:36
More celebrations on Tyneside today with Newcastle U FC hitting the top 3 of all VIFA senior* teams for the very first time in their nine years in the game, and also winning their fifth Division One title, this time in Scotland. Previous titles were in Brazil (2) and Greece (2).
The campaign saw the Geordies only lose a single game, with 25 wins and 4 draws, with 63 goals scored, most by Georgian star https://www.virtualmanager.com/players/14871027-rostevan-melikishvili with 18 league goals and 4 cup goals. (Newcastle were semi-finalists in the Scottish Cup this season, losing to the eventual winners and last year’s league champions Næstved Hawks, https://www.virtualmanager.com/clubs/1201739).
Newcastle U FC Manager Rolf Bergström was interviewed by The Athlete’s Georgia Caulkina, asking him what being one of the top 3 clubs in the entire VIFA game meant to him and to his team.
“Frankly Georgia, it is an extraordinary achievement for our club. In nine years the highest we have achieved was #4 over 5 years ago when we were winning our first League 1 title in Brazil in June 2017. Since then, as you know, before this week we had only won 3 further League 1 titles, today is our fifth and I really am so very proud of my players and so delighted for our fans. Winning Division 1 titles in VM is very, very hard.
“Some of our competitors spend a mind-boggling amount of hours trading hundreds of players to raise enormous revenues, enabling them to buy really good players and dominate their leagues. That is an impressive investment of time, no mistake and makes breaking into the top 10 VIFA ranked teams extremely difficult. That is not David’s (“Two Chins” Maguire – the NUFC owner) approach. In previous years here at the Sir Kevin Keegan Stadium we did what we could with our youth and senior squads to buy good prospects young (17-18) and see them mature, and to sell our aging players while they still have value to offer other clubs and could be replaced with maturing players in our senior squad. But last year David changed our model so that our title winning team this week only featured 2 players who we have had since they played for the Youth Team. Now we focus a lot more on buying talented 27-28 year olds, funded by success prize money, gate receipts and selling our 31-32 year old senior players, and as you’ve seen, that has worked out very well for us, culminating in this #3 ranking.
“Of course, the ideal dream is to discover wonderful young talents at age 15 and to nurture them with our top trainers, but that requires a huge amount of luck. In 9 years I think we have only seen 2 players of the many, many hundreds we have discovered, make it all the way to represent their national teams and hit ratings of >90 by age 30, it is very rare indeed, unfortunately. We continue to look for these players of course, of the last 120 players our scouts have hired at age 15, we have two interesting prospects, our little Greek midfield gem https://www.virtualmanager.com/players/15549884-xenophon-prevalakis who is only 150cm tall but has extraordinary ball control for a 16 year old and his compatriot https://www.virtualmanager.com/players/15570388-theofanis-melikis who is knocking them in for fun for our youth team, he’s already scored a bunch of goals for us and it’s really just the start of his career. Our wonderful coaching staff, led by Mossie Nketle has been with us some 56 seasons and his great team of coaches have really made a difference in raising the qualities of our players, helping them to optimise their skills by the time they are ready to push on in our first team.”
Caulkina also asked Billie Whitehurst, Chairman of supporters group Magtastic Day, what he and the Newcastle fans thought about the #3 ranking and the club winning its 5th League 1 title today. “Waye it’s bloody fantastic man Georgia man. For aal us Toon fans like this is unberlievable. We’ve had sur little to celebrate like over the years and now Rolf and the boys are doing magic. Wor lads are class. And it’s dead canny like winning the Scottish title coz its just up the road like and we can aal get to the games and that. We’ve even got a new chant this season which the lads love singin’….
“We’ve got Bondy in the middle, he knows exactly what we need; Brunt is at the back, Cygan in attack, we’ve gan and won the Scottish League”!
That’s one of over 30,000 very happy Geordies!
*the Newcastle U FC youth team has been the #1 Vifa-ranked team on several occasions
The campaign saw the Geordies only lose a single game, with 25 wins and 4 draws, with 63 goals scored, most by Georgian star https://www.virtualmanager.com/players/14871027-rostevan-melikishvili with 18 league goals and 4 cup goals. (Newcastle were semi-finalists in the Scottish Cup this season, losing to the eventual winners and last year’s league champions Næstved Hawks, https://www.virtualmanager.com/clubs/1201739).
Newcastle U FC Manager Rolf Bergström was interviewed by The Athlete’s Georgia Caulkina, asking him what being one of the top 3 clubs in the entire VIFA game meant to him and to his team.
“Frankly Georgia, it is an extraordinary achievement for our club. In nine years the highest we have achieved was #4 over 5 years ago when we were winning our first League 1 title in Brazil in June 2017. Since then, as you know, before this week we had only won 3 further League 1 titles, today is our fifth and I really am so very proud of my players and so delighted for our fans. Winning Division 1 titles in VM is very, very hard.
“Some of our competitors spend a mind-boggling amount of hours trading hundreds of players to raise enormous revenues, enabling them to buy really good players and dominate their leagues. That is an impressive investment of time, no mistake and makes breaking into the top 10 VIFA ranked teams extremely difficult. That is not David’s (“Two Chins” Maguire – the NUFC owner) approach. In previous years here at the Sir Kevin Keegan Stadium we did what we could with our youth and senior squads to buy good prospects young (17-18) and see them mature, and to sell our aging players while they still have value to offer other clubs and could be replaced with maturing players in our senior squad. But last year David changed our model so that our title winning team this week only featured 2 players who we have had since they played for the Youth Team. Now we focus a lot more on buying talented 27-28 year olds, funded by success prize money, gate receipts and selling our 31-32 year old senior players, and as you’ve seen, that has worked out very well for us, culminating in this #3 ranking.
“Of course, the ideal dream is to discover wonderful young talents at age 15 and to nurture them with our top trainers, but that requires a huge amount of luck. In 9 years I think we have only seen 2 players of the many, many hundreds we have discovered, make it all the way to represent their national teams and hit ratings of >90 by age 30, it is very rare indeed, unfortunately. We continue to look for these players of course, of the last 120 players our scouts have hired at age 15, we have two interesting prospects, our little Greek midfield gem https://www.virtualmanager.com/players/15549884-xenophon-prevalakis who is only 150cm tall but has extraordinary ball control for a 16 year old and his compatriot https://www.virtualmanager.com/players/15570388-theofanis-melikis who is knocking them in for fun for our youth team, he’s already scored a bunch of goals for us and it’s really just the start of his career. Our wonderful coaching staff, led by Mossie Nketle has been with us some 56 seasons and his great team of coaches have really made a difference in raising the qualities of our players, helping them to optimise their skills by the time they are ready to push on in our first team.”
Caulkina also asked Billie Whitehurst, Chairman of supporters group Magtastic Day, what he and the Newcastle fans thought about the #3 ranking and the club winning its 5th League 1 title today. “Waye it’s bloody fantastic man Georgia man. For aal us Toon fans like this is unberlievable. We’ve had sur little to celebrate like over the years and now Rolf and the boys are doing magic. Wor lads are class. And it’s dead canny like winning the Scottish title coz its just up the road like and we can aal get to the games and that. We’ve even got a new chant this season which the lads love singin’….
“We’ve got Bondy in the middle, he knows exactly what we need; Brunt is at the back, Cygan in attack, we’ve gan and won the Scottish League”!
That’s one of over 30,000 very happy Geordies!
*the Newcastle U FC youth team has been the #1 Vifa-ranked team on several occasions
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