Gabriel Agbonlahor

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Gabriel Agbonlahor
Gabriel Agbonlahor.jpg
Gabriel Agbonlahor at Aston Villa (2008)
Personnel
Surname Gabriel Imuetinyan Agbonlahor
birthday October 13, 1986
place of birth Birmingham ,  England
size 180 cm
position striker
Juniors
Years station
Great Barr Falcons
Aston Villa
Men's
Years station Games (goals) 1
2005-2018 Aston Villa 341 (75)
2005 →  Watford FC  (loan) 2 0(0)
2005 →  Sheffield Wednesday  (loan) 8 0(0)
National team
Years selection Games (goals)
2006-2009 England U-21 16 0(4)
2008-2009 England 3 0(0)
1 Only league games are given.
As of September 29, 2018

Gabriel Imuetinyan Agbonlahor (born October 13, 1986 in Birmingham ) is a former English football player . Known for his speed, the versatile striker went through the youth departments of Aston Villa and was an integral part of the local Premier League team from 2005 to 2018 .

Athletic career

Gabriel Agbonlahor showed great athletic talent from an early age. He scored goals on the assembly line for his small youth club Great Barr Falcons in the U-9 team and was also considered a possible athlete for the 100 and 200 meter distances in his teens due to his speed. With the admission to the youth department of Aston Villa he finally decided for football and made at the beginning of the 21st century with 35 goals as an U-17 player in the 2003/04 season and 18 goals in the U-18 in the following The 2004/05 season attracted attention. Even the jump to the reserve team of the "Villans" succeeded relatively easily, which his 13 goals in 13 "Reserves" games in the 2005/06 season proved.

Despite the signing of a two-year contract in June 2005, Agbonlahor was not yet used in the Premier League team and he gained his first professional experience in the second half of 2005, initially with second-rate loan clubs. He was drawn to Watford FC in the south of England for a month at the end of September and then to Sheffield Wednesday from the end of October until just before the end of the year . Countable successes remained in the ten goalless games as a supplementary player, however. With the regular Aston Villa club he played in nine league games from March 2006, but was only in the starting line-up in three matches and only scored once in the opposing goal - on his first division debut on March 18, 2006 against Everton (1: 4).

Agbonlahors sporting breakthrough was announced in the preparation games for the 2006/07 season. Here he made a good impression with his goal danger and speed and the new coach Martin O'Neill mainly used him as a right winger. With nine goals in 38 league games, he was the most accurate player on his team and the 20-year-old was not in the starting line-up in just one game. The upward trend continued in the 2007/08 and 2008/09 seasons when he scored eleven championship goals at the side of center forward John Carew and the equally lightning-fast young winger Ashley Young . Other highlights were the Premier League's first-time award for Best Player of the Month 2007 and his hat-trick against Manchester City on August 17, 2008 in just seven minutes. He was one of the nominated players in the election for the best young professional of the 2008/09 season "( PFA Young Player of the Year )", but drew the short straw behind his teammate Ashley Young. Agbonlahor had long worked his way into the English senior team and in the 2009/10 season he replaced Carew as the most accurate Villa player with 13 league players.

English national team

As a highly traded talent with Scottish and Nigerian roots, Agbonlahor, who grew up in England, was courted by three national associations shortly before his 20th birthday after a successful breakthrough in sport. In September 2006, officials in Nigeria wanted to use him for the first time in a U-20 game against Rwanda; the young striker himself refused, but initially did not rule out wanting to play for his father's home country in the future. However, he quickly found a perspective in the English U-21 team , where he made his debut against Germany (2-0) in October 2006 and scored five goals in a total of 16 games. A proposed nomination for the U-21 European Championship in the Netherlands in 2007 withheld from then coach Stuart Pearce after Agbonlahor had missed the previous training camp in Spain - he had been "unreachable" after the end of the 2006/07 season.

Last doubts about his possible choice of country for the senior national team were dispelled in November 2008. Before that, coach Fabio Capello had appointed him to the squad since February 2008, and Agbonlahor even played his debut on November 19, 2008 in a friendly against the German national team (2: 1). On October 14, 2009, the striker, who had just turned 23, played the first competitive game for the "Three Lions" against Belarus (3-0) in World Cup qualification.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ "Gabriel Agbonlahor looking at the wider picture with both club and country" (Times Online)
  2. ↑ "Agbonlahor, Gabriel Imuetinyan" Gabby "" (Aston Villa Player Database)
  3. ^ "Owls seal Agbonlahor loan switch" (BBC Sport)
  4. ↑ "Aston Villa 4-2 Manchester City" (Soccerbase)
  5. ↑ Barry J. Hugman (Ed.): The PFA Footballers' Who's Who . Mainstream Publishing, 2009, ISBN 978-1-84596-474-0 , pp. 15 .
  6. ^ "Scots consider Agbonlahor call-up" (BBC Sport)
  7. ↑ "Agbonlahor turns down Nigeria" (BBC Sport)
  8. ^ "Agbonlahor in England U21 squad" (BBC Sport)
  9. ↑ "Capello keeps Agbonlahor in squad" (BBC Sport)
  10. ↑ "Aston Villa's Agbonlahor and Young impress England captain Terry" (Birmingham Mail)
personal data
SURNAME Agbonlahor, Gabriel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Agbonlahor, Gabriel Imuetinyan (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English soccer player
DATE OF BIRTH October 13, 1986
PLACE OF BIRTH Birmingham , UK