{"id":17877,"date":"2013-01-24T10:35:03","date_gmt":"2013-01-24T15:35:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=17877"},"modified":"2013-01-24T10:35:03","modified_gmt":"2013-01-24T15:35:03","slug":"who-is-olivier-kapo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=17877","title":{"rendered":"Who is Olivier Kapo?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"kapo4_1754274c\"<\/a><\/p>\n

“No comment.”<\/p>\n

That was Jay Heaps’ response on Monday when asked about Olivier Kapo, a name that appeared on the Revolution’ preseason\u00a0roster sheet issued to the press.<\/p>\n

So who is Olivier Kapo,\u00a0other than\u00a0a player the Revolution coaching staff clearly has plans for this\u00a0preseason?<\/p>\n

For starters, he’s\u00a0a 32-year-old\u00a0left-sided midfielder\/forward from the\u00a0Ivory\u00a0Coast\u00a0with a\u00a0resume\u00a0features\u00a0notable stops in\u00a0top leagues such as Serie A, Ligue 1, and the English Premier League.<\/p>\n

Kapo’s career has been an interesting one, to say the least. He’s\u00a0in the midst\u00a0of an\u00a018-month contract with France\u2019s AJ Auxerre, where he began his career in 1996 with the club\u2019s youth team. Auxerre gave him a professional contract in 1999 and he proceeded to score 19 goals in 119 appearances.<\/p>\n

His success in Ligue 1 earned him a look from the French National Team, with whom he played for in 2002 rather than his native Ivory Coast. Kapo\u2019s international career extends only as far as the three goals he totaled in nine international appearances for France, though he did score in the 2003 Confederations Cup.<\/p>\n

In 2004, Italian superclub Juventus signed Kapo on a free transfer from Auxerre, arguably the player\u2019s highest profile career move. But Kapo didn\u2019t make the most of his move to Juventus. Just\u00a024 at the time, Kapo wasn\u2019t experienced enough to adapt to the competitiveness of being on a team with the likes of Pavel Nedved, Alessandro Del Piero, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, and David Trezeguet and was subsequently loaned out back to France to play for Monaco and then Levante the following year.<\/p>\n

In 2007, Kapo was sold to Birmingham City of the EPL for $4.75 million. And though he played regularly and registered 5 goals, he signed for Wigan Athletic a year later. From then on, Kapo\u2019s career\u00a0careened off the rails and he bounced from France (loan to Boulogne) to Scotland (Celtic) to Qatar (Al-Ahly), and back to France (Auxerre).<\/p>\n

Kapo\u2019s scoring record shows that he\u2019s never been a player who tears holes in opposing team\u2019s nets. Rather, he\u2019s a finesse player who works as a target man. The Revolution haven\u2019t had a true target player since Pat Noonan, and with four forwards on the roster who want to be more the finishing type than set-up type, Kapo could be valuable.<\/p>\n

Bringing in Kapo on trial is a classic low-risk move\u00a0for the club, but one that Heaps can’t help but be intrigued by.\u00a0 Yes, signing Kapo would require the Revolution to forfeit their eighth and final international roster spot. And yes, Kapo clearly knows what the going rate is for a player who’s played in some of the top clubs in the world.<\/p>\n

But with Jerry Bengston\u00a0likely gone for parts of the\u00a0season\u00a0as a result of\u00a0national team duty with Honduras and Sene coming back from a serious\u00a0injury, Kapo could be exactly what the Revolution will need to keep the offense firing on all cylinders this summer.<\/p>\n

Brian O’Connell contributed to this story.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Revolution will have no fewer than 12 trialists in camp this week – but one of them has a noteworthy resume. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17877"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17877"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17877\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17890,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17877\/revisions\/17890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}