THe is dear to AS Monaco The training center is not a few minutes from the coast. You are drawn to a hill along winding roads with steep turns. They control your speed before you get to a beautiful object located in a mountain in the French commune La Tourbie, from where an exciting view of the Mediterranean Sea opens.
The club officially presented this object in September 2022. A year later, they bought striker Folarin Balogun from Arsenal for 40 million euros ($ 44 million). This collection, including allowances, is the third largest in the history of the club and the largest in Monaco since the pandemic. It was expected that the Balogun, who in the previous season, on Rent for Reims, scored 22 goals in 39 games, will resume his growth in his career. League 1 And bring your new team to the Champions League. After the modest eight goals and seven programs in 32 games in his first season, the pressure increased for Monaco.
And then it stopped.
Balogun dislocated his left shoulder in October last year and, returning to the match with Marseille, decided to make an operation because of which he dropped out of the game until March. It turned out that this would not be a smooth and direct path to the heights of French and European football and glory at the World Cup as part of the US male team.
“As you can imagine, it was really difficult to not be able to do what you love,” says Balogun to the Guardian newspaper. “But I learned a lot about myself, which was also a positive moment.”
The striker, born in Brooklyn and raised in London, remained in Monaco for most of his rehabilitation, and when he was abroad, the club still organized and controlled the process.
“For me, it was an opportunity to just look at the situation outside the field. Look at people around me, at the team that helped me perform deeper conversations with them, set clear goals at the moment when I return, and push people from the inside,” says Balogun. “I am part of the team of Monaco and the US male team, but individually I have my own set of people who help me speak and do what I do, to the best of my abilities.”
In September, he made the long -awaited return to the United States. It was also his first gathering under the leadership of the head coach Maurisio Pochettino, but this was far from his first contact with the US coaching staff. Pochettino's right hand, Hesus Perez, visited Balogun at the end of last season, when he returned, and the striker was going to join the USA for the Golden Cup. But the ankle injury the day before the match with Lyon had completed the Balogun season ahead of schedule and postponed his return in the fall.
“I did most of the work, and when I started finding the rhythm again, it was broken,” he says.
Its absence could last even longer. In an effort to pay priority to the rhythm and physical shape of the players, Pochettino seemed to be ready to allow the Balogun to stay in Monaco in September, until the injury of another striker changed his opinion.
Balogun returned to US team It is very different from the one with which he played in his last appearance. Nevertheless, Pochettino, the former coach of Tottenham, Chelsea and PSG, was not alien to the academic products of Arsenal. Balogun watched Pochettino's teams to understand what he was looking for. But now, when one camp is behind him, and this week another one is expected, Balogun noticed the difference in freedom under the new boss.
“From a structural point of view, this is very similar [to former head coach Gregg Berhalter]. Of course, he wants us to be organized, and that everyone knew his role in the possession of the ball and outside him. But on the other hand, he also wants us to play with great freedom, ”he says. – He does not want to teach the attacker how to beat his defender in position 1 to 1. He knows that you are at this level, because you are good enough and he wants you to promote your ideas and try something, and if you make a mistake, this is normal. So I would say that there is much more freedom in the attack. ”
After an energetic performance on the bench in the match in the match with Korea, Balogun went out in the starting lineup and scored the second goal in the match. A confident victory over Japan with a score of 2: 0.. In addition to demonstrating his physical strength and the quality of the ball, his movements without the ball opened the US attack.
Balogun attributes his experienced repertoire of strokes of the time when he was an attacker at the beginning of his career, and formed his unique approach to the position of the central striker.
“I think that the movement of the winger, obviously, is of key importance,” he says. “If you want to score goals, you cannot always stay on the flank. You need to have many attempts to attack the middle of the field where you can score. And since I switched to the attacker’s position, I always said that I am an unorthodox striker, because, of course, this is not the place where I grew up, so I always sought to use the space. It is great when we can find me, and it gives me confidence, and it gives me confidence that it gives me confidence, and it gives me confidence that I can find me Continue to play. ” Performing these jogging, because I know that they are looking for me.
“I know that when the right moment has come, it is essentially impossible to protect it. So this is just a case when a person who controls the ball, and I constantly synchronize so that the time is successful.”
Indeed, the goal of Balogun against Japan was a glimpse of this: Christian Pulishic received the ball deeply, then at full speed led the ball, and Japan retreated, and then found Balogun in a penalty with a perfectly weighed pass. The Japanese defender turned his head briefly to follow the Balogun before the program, but when he tried again, Balogun pushed him without much effort to create a space for a neat blow with his left foot.
“When I could see [Pulisic] When making certain movements, I would just make the opposite in order to free the space in the penalty area, this would give him the opportunity to play or continue to lead the ball, and vice versa, ”says Balogun. “As an attacking player, this is all that you can do, and these are the situations from which you want more. It is better to attack and find out the situation with CP than to run and defend yourself on the edge of the penalty area. ”
The movement of Balogun also uses praise with his teammates.
“[He] Obviously, he has amazing ability to play in the transition period, very quickly, ”said the defender of Monaco Eric Dyer after the match from Monaco. A draw in the Champions League 2: 2 against Manchester City.. “He also ends the blow very well, judging by what I saw in training, he is very powerful, he makes very good movements, and I think you have seen it today.”
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At the September fee, Balogun said that the pressure accompanying the US preparation for the World Cup exceeds what he still experienced at the club level. He can feel an increasing expectation through social networks. And when he is in the States, he notes that advertising shields and advertisements increase in size.
“It would be completely naive to grow in Europe, play for Arsenal and just travel around Europe to establish myself … The pressure has always been part of all this, so it definitely helps me to participate in such a big event,” he says.
He has one major international tournament behind him: he scored two of the three heads of the US national team at the America Cup last summer before the team flew out of the group stage.
“I left this tournament with disappointment, but also with hunger, because I scored several goals in it, and I really liked the feeling of struggle for my country at such a high level,” he says. “I really wanted to stay in this tournament longer.”
This vaunted generation of American players is still looking for a victory over the opponent of the highest level, which would justify the expectations of the team and at the same time, according to Balogun, would provide the necessary psychological rise.
“I think we need it,” he says. “We believed that we can do this, but I think that this will not be done until it is done. I think that as soon as you achieve such a result in the match against a larger country or a real result, which will show that you dominated the game for 90 minutes, and you retained a draw and, perhaps, have scored five, six goals … This will be a different feeling. I think that we need it.
The next chance will probably be a friendly rematch with Uruguay in November, and in March of the United States, they reportedly will meet with Portugal and Belgium.
“When I was in the camp, we always talked about this result against the big team, which really begins to change the dynamics and views,” he says. “So before the World Cup there are definitely important stages that we can do, and which will really give us such confidence.”
In individual terms, Balogun still seeks to establish himself as an striker of the “upper class”. The success of USMNT at the World Cup, of course, may depend on its progress and form after eight months.
“I know what is needed for this. Of course, it will be a great game as a whole, but goals and programs will make it decisive,” he says, emphasizing the Champions League platform.
“Part of my desire to play for” Monaco “is the prestige of the club, what they were able to achieve in Europe, what they were able to do against huge rivals.”
More and more friends and relatives will write to him about visiting these special occasions, and for a trip to this part of the world there will not be a lot of beliefs.
At first, the adaptation to such a way of life was a really difficult task, and Balogun needed more time than he expected. Slowly but surely he teaches French to better communicate with his teammates. But in addition to amenities, isolation, exclusivity, luxurious cars and yachts, he now feels comfortable, appreciates pluses such as safety and inevitably picturesque situation, and is ready to take the next step in his career.
“This is a player who builds his way again,” said Pochettino.
