For Givon Awete, an ultimate dream came true this week. The eighteen-year-old striker from Amsterdam has been recruited by Besiktas and will play with the highest youth team of the Turkish superpower in the UEFA Youth League. “That is a mega step, because Givon has never played at a professional club before,” emphasizes Gwendell van Riemsdijk, who had the attacker under his wing in his own football academy last year and now also acts as his supervisor.
As a youth, Awete was active for many years at the renowned amateur club Zeeburgia, but never played for a professional football team. Van Riemsdijk explains that his academy is geared to making the step towards vocational education smaller. “We mimic the stimulus. We train five times a week and show the players how it works at a professional club,” said the founder of the Van Riemsdijk Sports Agency, who played football in the youth at Ajax, Haarlem and FC Utrecht, but never broke through.
Now he’s helping young players fulfill the dream that was shattered for him by a lackluster attitude as a young adult. “We have been working on that for about four years now and we have already dropped off a good number of boys at sc Heerenveen, FC Emmen, Roda JC Kerkrade or abroad, but Besiktas is still a big step higher. Givon can be very proud of that. He had to come a long way due to his private situation, but now he gets the opportunity he never even dared to dream of.”
Without going into details, Van Riemsdijk says that with Awete it was mainly due to his attitude that he was not previously active at a professional club. “He did have the talent. We saw that right away in him. That’s why we invested in him with the whole team, showed him how to live as a pro and what you have to pay for it. And then something very beautiful can arise. Just look at a Memphis Depay or Riechedly Bazoer. If you can hit guys with less discipline or ‘with a scar’, they can go very far. You go crazy when there are twenty in your team, but a few is fine and he was one of them. They will have a lot of fun with that at Besiktas.”
Strangely enough, the young attacker also regularly did an internship at clubs such as De Graafschap, KV Mechelen and the Danish Odense, but there were always too many doubts or financial concerns to offer him a contract, explains Van Riemsdijk. He and his colleague Rosco Cyrus eventually came into contact with Besiktas through single Turkish international Baki Mercimek. “I know Baki from Haarlem and in Turkey they were immediately enthusiastic about Givon. His perseverance is fantastic and he can play football! I see it as a reward for his hard work and also a little bit of proof of the success of our approach. I am very proud and he is of course overjoyed now that everything is in black and white. From our academy to Besiktas, great!”