Tim Clancy has revealed that Dutch defender Noah Lewis’s arrival at Richmond Park was all down to Brexit.
The 22-year-old signed for St Patrick’s Athletic last month from Willem II in his native Netherlands.
A product of the Feyenoord Academy, the centre-half was due to move to the UK in the January transfer window, but didn’t qualify for a work permit under Brexit rules.
And when Clancy heard of his plight, he offered the 6’4” prospect an opportunity to move to the League of Ireland.
“He was supposed to go to the UK but he didn’t meet the criteria for the work permit because of Brexit, so he was lucky enough to get onto our radar,” said Clancy.
“We took him in and had a look, and the scope of Noah, there’s a pretty high ceiling there.
“He’s got a lot of physically good attributes, he’s 6’4”, he’s very quick, and he’s not a bad footballer.
“We are excited to work with him and we want to see how much he improves over the next few months. It’s a big season for him.”
The St Pat’s boss acknowledged that Brexit had thrown up a number of unexpected opportunities for clubs on this side of the water.
And he won’t be afraid to take advantage again of the new red tape within British football, when it comes to adding to his squad.
“We have to capitalise on that,” he said. “It’s going to be one of those ones where situations like this will arise.
“And also there are younger lads in the league here now who will stay here before they go to England, so that’s a positive as well.”
Clancy has been busy squad-building ahead of the new campaign, with Tommy Lonergan (UCD), Vladislav Kreida (Flora Tallinn, loan), Conor Carty (Bolton, loan) and Jake Mulraney (Orlando City) also arriving.
And he’s not finished yet. “We might add another one or two before the season starts,” he said.
“We are quite happy with the squad at the minute. The lads we brought in have settled in well and we are excited to see how they get on this season.
“We are in a good place and we are looking forward now to getting the season started.”
Looking forward to the new season, Clancy said: “We want to improve on last year. We have a better squad than we did last year.
“We’ve 12 months in the back pocket with the majority of the squad, so they know how we want to play.
“We hope we will be a lot more consistent from the start of the season. We were a little bit inconsistent in the first six months of last year.
“This year we will hopefully have a more consistent start to the season and go from there.
“We are looking forward to the excitement of Friday nights and the pressure that comes with it. It’s brilliant. I can’t wait to get started again.
“We’ve got a very tough game against Derry to start off, but you might as well go in the deep end.”
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