The New Dueling Lands. What's wrong with Lonewijk

Dynamo Kyiv midfielder Justin Lonwijk changed clubs during the season. The Dutch club Fortuna rented Lonwijk until the end of the summer without the right to buy him back. Justin started the season with Belgian side Anderlecht.

Things were not going well for Lonwijk in Brussels. The club's coach, Brian Riemer, did not really count on the Dutch legionnaire. Although this season, the Royal Club of Belgium is fighting for the championship for the first time in many years. Competition and squad depth are needed to fight Union.

This season, Lonwijk has only 39 minutes in three Belgian league matches. The player, on loan from Dynamo, has no game practice. "Anderlecht did not mind getting rid of the player. Dynamo didn't want him either. It was necessary to look for a compromise with a third club.

In the autumn of 2022, in a Europa League match against Fenerbahce, Mykola Shaparenko suffered a serious knee injury. "Dynamo needed to enter the transfer market to strengthen the squad. Thanks to the work of agent Oleksandr Yakovenko, Lonwijk came to Kyiv from Vyborg. I was impressed with this transfer. Lonwijk played power football in Denmark, and the climatic conditions there are hardly better than ours. He has excellent anthropometry, is technical and can play 2-3 positions. It all looked very promising and promising.

While Lonwijk played in the autumn, in the spring of 2023 he was firmly on the bench. No progress, no strengthening of the team. In the summer, Dynamo loaned the player out with a buyout option.

The result was not at all optimistic: the PSV pupil failed to shine in Eindhoven. He failed at the status clubs Dynamo Kyiv and Anderlecht Brussels. With such a resume, it will be very difficult to find a new good team. All this becomes a problem for Dynamo, as the player's contract with the Kyiv club runs until the summer of 2027. Justin needs to show an incredible level of football in the second part of the season to be in demand in the summer

The player who was supposed to be an asset for the club has become a liability. Now we have to figure out where to put him. I don't think Justin Lonewijk's problems are football-related.

The situation with Lonwijk is somewhat similar to the story of Michael Dueland. The player was excellent in Danish football, which has a lot in common with Ukrainian football. The example of Benjamin Verbych showed that such a connection has the right to live. Verbych quickly became successful in the UPL because he had all the prerequisites for this. Something similar was expected from Duelund. But nothing happened, neither with Hatskevich, nor with Mykhailychenko, nor with Lucescu. Michael did not show anything special in the Netherlands. His business at Aarhus is not going well either. Only 8 matches in the first part of the season. The 4 million spent in the summer of 2018 did not pay off at all. In the summer, Duelund will become a free agent.

Duelund also made a good impression at the beginning. It seemed that he simply did not have the confidence of the coach. Injuries prevented him from getting fit and playing consistently. But the problem is much deeper and it's not with Dynamo's coaches. After Ukraine, the footballer's fortunes did not go uphill.

Serhiy Tyshchenko