When the Goals Come Out of Nowhere

And yet there is a problem with that reading. Goals might be cheap in Holland, but not every Eredivisie team has a striker — every season — who scores them by the bucketload. The leading scorer at Ajax, as it canters to another championship this year, is Dusan Tadic, a midfielder. Something, then, must be different about Giakoumakis, just as something must have explained Alves or Janssen in years gone by.

The answer, of course, lies in context. There is a degree of serendipity in how Giakoumakis found himself in Venlo. It is not the sort of club that can afford to be choosy. It plays in one of the smallest stadiums, and has one of the smallest budgets, in the Eredivisie. At Venlo, success is getting to fight relegation again next year.

Stan Valckx, the man in charge of cobbling together its shoestring team, has no vast network of scouts. He cannot pay colossal transfer fees. He has to keep his eyes and his mind open, and he has to take risks. Most of all, he has no choice but to listen to every pitch from every agent for every player. “I always answer the phone,” he said.

That is how he found Giakoumakis. Last March, he got yet another unsolicited call, from an agent suggesting he take a look at a 26-year-old Greek striker playing in Poland. Valckx did what he always does: a little cursory investigation. Giakoumakis’s numbers were not especially impressive. “If you just looked at the statistics, he probably would not have come to us,” he said.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/30/sports/soccer/when-the-goals-come-out-of-nowhere.html