It was the year when the Czech national team made its last appearance at the World Cup. Since then, it has languished in its flirtation with the elite tournament. It has not secured an invitation to the world party even once out of four other possible occasions.
It was also in 2006 that Yannick Eduardo was born in Kadan. You're not familiar with his name? You should, because this is a boy who is now predicted to be a future Bundesliga star. And he could very well take the Czechs back to the World Cup one day, if he agrees to wear the Czech national colours...
So far, however, the story of the footballer, who has not only Czech but also Dutch citizenship, is going against the Czechs. He has decided to represent the Oranjes, although the Czech coaches are doing their best to convince him.
In doing so, he was first spotted using Instagram. "The first thing I saw were Instagram highlights. After that, I got records of some matches from Nijmegen and Leipzig. But already on Instagram, I thought he looked really good," Petr Havlicek recalls how he started the process of persuading Eduardo to come and play for the Czech U-17 national team. "Yannick is tall, strong and fast, has a good left foot, good dribbling and plays well with his back to the goal," he lists the talented striker's strengths.
In short, a player that every coach would like to have in his team. "We have received interest from top clubs from the Netherlands, Germany, England and Italy," says the player’s manager Bas Schothorst. "But I knew from the beginning that Yannick would feel best in Leipzig. It's a great club for his development. After visiting several clubs, Yannick and his family decided to choose Leipzig."
The young footballer cannot praise the move enough. "So far everything is fine. I have a good relationship with the club, the coaches and the players. I play in a tough competition and have managed to score quite a few goals," he says at the beginning of the interview. Eleven goals in twelve games and Eduardo dominated the Bundesliga U17 scorers' table.
He doesn't know much about Czech football. No wonder. He comes from a generation that completely missed the successful era of Pavel Nedvěd, Tomáš Rosický or Petr Čech.
"To tell you the truth, I mainly follow the Premier League and the Bundesliga. I don't watch much Czech football. When I watch football, I want to learn something and that's why I only watch the top competitions." His favorite player is Erling Haaland, the 22-year-old Manchester City star... If you watch the highlights of Eduardo's goals, you will see that he can finish in many ways. His height and speed immediately catch your eye, and you can't help thinking that maybe you are watching the future successor to the Norwegian scorer who is impressing the Premier League. "I hear that a lot and I'm glad for the compliment because Erling Haaland is my favourite player for several reasons," Eduardo fires right back.
However, he still has a long way to go and a lot of hard work to grow to Haaland's size. But Eduardo is not afraid of it. He works hard and ambitiously every day. He wants to be better than everyone else. And as he says, he does. His words are confirmed by Schothorst. "Yannick has great potential and wants to be one of the best in the world. I have to say that he is amazing to work with in this aspect - he is extremely focused on training and his own development. He constantly has a lot of questions so that he can improve," explains the man who hopes Eduardo will feature at the European Under-17 Championships in the spring.
Leipzig are also taking notice of the progress. During the World Cup, when Marco Rose, first team coach, needed to fill out the squad, select youngsters from the academy received an invitation. Eduardo was among them. He made a good impression on the coaches. He will spend the first week of January with the team at a training camp in Abu Dhabi.
"I'm glad for the experience because I can continue to improve thanks to such opportunities. Moreover, it is a great compliment for me that if the first team needs some players from the academy, I will be among the first to be pointed out," boasts Eduardo, who is studying at an international school in Germany and speaks a little German in addition to Dutch, English and solid Czech.
His nature is simply set for a career as a professional athlete, as Havlíček confirms. "He's set up right. When you talk to him, you don't think he's a 16-year-old boy, but a grown man." Eduardo nods. "Yes, after every match I'm interested in feedback, I'm interested in analysing my performances and I want to know what I can be better at. And I also work on myself."
In Europe, you could find few better places to nurture young footballers than in the talent factory just a two-hour drive from Prague, something Eduardo and his family already knew. "Everything is in place for me to become a good professional footballer. These are also new things for me.”
The decision to represent the Netherlands stems from the youngster's setup, although Havlicek keeps in regular contact with him and they have conversations that usually end up outside of football. Havlicek is amazed. He would very much like to see such a player elevate Czech football. "We have a lot of great players, but genetically Yannick is different. He would bring us something unique," knows the coach, whom Eduardo respects.
When he showed up in Prague for a few days between the holidays, he didn't hesitate to invite the Czech coach and his partner to lunch and introduce them to his mother. "He still hasn't made a final decision. He cares a lot about the fact that he was born here in the Czech Republic," the youth coach remains confident of success.
For now, however, Eduardo has pointed to the Netherlands, where he has had friends in the national team and where he lived since he was two years old and it is a bigger challenge for him to make it in the huge competition. "I am a player who still needs to improve a lot and here are the best players from all over the country. Playing and training with them pushes me. I don't know if I will represent the Netherlands or the Czech Republic in the future, but I have evaluated that playing for the Netherlands is the best option for me at the moment," explains the dreadlocked forward, who is happy to return to his hometown. He still speaks Czech so he can talk to his grandmother in Kadan. "I can talk like that, yes, but I can't talk in Czech about football and my career. That's already hard for me," Eduardo laughs when he uses Czech words for the first time during an interview.
Many people think that his height would make him more suitable for basketbal. However, Yannick was not far from playing the same sport as his four years older brother Cortesao Joao Eduardo, who plays for USK Prague.
"When I was younger, I wanted to be a basketball player," he recalls. At five years old, however, he was still too small. He stuck with football. When he grew up, he was determined to swap the pitch for the basketball court. "It looked like I was really going to quit football. My last training session came and that's when I realised I couldn't do it because I loved it so much.“
There is debate about where the sporting talent runs in the family. The brothers also inherited their height from their mother, who is 183 centimetres tall and used to play sports at a high level, just like their father. Eduardo, however, has his own thesis. "My brother and I have come this far because of our mental setup - from a young age we train more than others, we compete with each other, we heckle each other about who trains more, who puts in more sets in the gym...," concludes the ambitious boy.
One can't help but think that whatever national colours he chooses in the future years, we will see him shine at the World Cup tournaments.