Teammates “were no better”
Three goals in six games – that’s the record of right winger Patrick Twumasi since moving from Hannover 96 to Maccabi Netanya in early February. The Lower Saxony record transfer of the 2020/21 season, which played its last game for the Reds in May 2021, seems to be back on the right track in Israel’s first division. In an interview, the 27-year-old looks back on his time in Hanover in anything but a positive light and raises allegations against those responsible for the club – sporting director Marcus Mann partially rejects them.
“You lied to me,” quotes the “Bild” newspaper Twumasi from an interview with the Israeli Internet portal “One“. He was “the most valuable player in the club”, “but they didn’t give me a chance. (…) When I asked them ‘Why?’ they told me different stories. (…) They didn’t want to tell me the truth. The ones that played were no better.”
Twumasi’s transfer from Aláves to the leash goes back to coaches Kenan Kocak and sports director Gerhard Zuber, who are no longer employed by the club. In his first season, the offensive power made 22 appearances (three goals/two assists) but did not play the full 90 minutes. The right winger could not get past players like Kingsley Schindler, Linton Maina, Florent Muslija, Marvin Ducksch or Genki Haraguchi. Already in the following season he no longer ran for the professionals.
A situation that he still can’t seem to come to terms with: “When I arrived in Hanover, I was promised many minutes of play. And then I wasn’t even in the squad, wondering: what’s going on here? I was confused. You can’t buy a player with a lot of money, bench him and say he’s no good.”
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His station in Hanover was the first time in his career “that I felt unhappy”. In addition, 96 repeatedly sent him into quarantine without justification during the corona pandemic. “I wasn’t positive at all. They stopped me from training and decided that my family and I should stay in quarantine for two weeks.” The latter countered 96 sports director Marcus Mann on Tuesday in the “image“-Zeitung: “Many things happened before my time, I can’t say anything about that. Patrick’s quarantine was ordered by the health department, not by us.
Ex-96er Twumasi: “Has to prove it to Hannover – they didn’t respect me”
It is not the first time that Twumasi has publicly insulted his former employer: at the beginning of the year he was released from training in Lower Saxony, during which time he had, among other things publicly criticized the club’s media department via Instagram. In order to accommodate him from the Lower Saxony siding with another club, 96 is supposed to give up the contract, which originally ran until 2023 – which, according to reports, made Twumasi the best earner in the Red squad with an annual salary of almost 1 million euros – against payment a severance payment of 300,000 euros.
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According to his own statements, the player didn’t have to think long about the offer from Netanya: “I said to myself, I have to accept it, I have to prove it to Hannover. They didn’t respect me. And the way they treated me and my family was crazy. I want to show them that I’m not giving up, that life goes on.” The attacker’s working paper for the Ligat ha’Al, currently fifth in the table, is dated until 2023, including an option for a further year.
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Twumasi turned down Celtic offer – Rodgers: “You’ll have a great career”
In the interview with “One”, Twumasi also revealed that he had rejected an offer from Celtic Glasgow in favor of Deportivo Aláves in 2017 and that he regretted it in retrospect. “I played twice against Celtic for Astana in the Champions League. Celtic coach Brendan Rodgers called me personally, which was a great honour,” said the three-time Ghana international.
“He said to me, ‘Patrick, come to Celtic and you’re going to have a great career. I love the way you play.’ (…) But my family and my advisor recommended that I go to Spain instead. They said that although Alaves was a much smaller club, Spanish football gets a lot more attention than it does in Scotland. Sometimes football is business.”
“Looking back, I really regret not accepting Celtic’s offer,” Twumasi continued. He texted Rodgers, who now works at Leicester City, to apologize “and I admitted to him that I made the wrong decision. He told me he respects me and if I want to come back to Celtic in the future we could arrange that. But it never happened.”
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