“I met him when he was thirteen, he was still at school. The ball was another limb, a third foot. He did what he wanted.”
Erol Tokgözler, coach of Arda Güler in the Genclerbirligi quarrythe club where the now Madrid player played before signing for Fenerbahçe assured that the young Turkish footballer “has more potential than Lionel Messi.”
“I met him when he was 13, while he was still in school. When he arrived at Genclerbirligi, I was one of his teachers (he is currently still a physical education teacher), as well as his coach. One of my teammates, Before he knew him, he had already warned me that Arda was something exceptional,” he began Tokgözler describes Arda in an interview for the newspaper “AS”.
‘He has more potential than Messi’
As for the comparisons to Mesut Ozil or Leo Messi that Arda has received Guler at the beginning of his career, Tokgözler explained: “Messi is the greatest I have ever seen and Arda has great capabilities. Messi has already achieved everything and Arda has to do it, he is still a child. But if we talk about pure potential, Arda has more potential than Messi. Although he still has a long way to go. His football is in its early stages, he needs to play a lot of games to become the player he can be. But, as I said, Arda’s potential is better than Messi’s. Speaking of potential, of course.”
Asked which Real Madrid footballer most resembles his former manager, he said: “At Real Madrid I think of Luka Modric. He is not a player like Toni Kroos, for example. Arda’s main weapon is the ball and driving. He has always thoughts moving forward, he plays in a very vertical way, his passes are also vertical, with the goal and the goal in mind.”
“The ball was like another limb, a third foot. He could do anything he wanted. And best of all, in every situation he had two, three, four or five alternatives, five different plans. That didn’t happen .” It doesn’t matter where on the field he plays football. He plays football with his mind. When they were in front of him, the defenders thought: ‘How can I stop him?’” he added.
Source: Goal