Croatia’s 2006 Football Player of the Year, Eduardo da Silva (right), continued his fine form in 2007 for new club Arsenal, who he joined this past August, and is already off to a blazing start in 2008 with 2 goals and an assist in 3 games. He is even receiving great praise from Arsenal manager, Frenchman Arsene Wenger- and that is something not loosely thrown around in the English Premier League. In 14 starts this season, Eduardo has found the back of the net 11 times. This means he’s scoring in 78% of the games he has started, which is an incredible achievement. In his last 4 games Eduardo has scored 6 goals. Granted that many of these games have been versus ridiculously horrible teams in FA Cup and Carling Cup action, Eduardo is still doing what he was paid to do. His £8million (just over $16 million) transfer from Dinamo Zagreb has paid off for Arsenal who saw Thierry Henry leave for Barcelona in the summer and 22 year-old Dutch forward phenom Robin van Persie injure himself in late 2007. For a coach of Arsene Wenger’s caliber to say that one of his new player’s is producing at “top, top numbers for any striker anywhere in the world,” brings back talk if he can do what Davor Šuker did for Croatian soccer in the ’90’s. Eduardo is only 24 years old and is on pace to break Davor Šuker’s Croatian record of 45 goals, which he accomplished in 69 appearences tallying 12 years. Eduardo already has 13 goals in 21 appearences in just under 2 years of service for the senior team. Let’s just hope he stays healthy, because if he does Croatian fans will be partying like it was 1998!…only this time watching our boys lift a world championship above their heads.
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