The curious story of the youngest talent that Hansi Flick has noticed

BarcelonaIn the two friendlies that Barça has played so far – against CE Europa (4-1) behind closed doors and against Birmingham City (2-2, 3-2) – Ebrima Tunkara has shown why, despite being only 16 years old, Hansi Flick has counted on him for pre-season. Born in Lamoi (Gambia) in 2010, he is the youngest in an expedition where the average age is around 20 years. Ebrima and the Israeli midfielder Orian Goren, aged 17, are the ones with the fewest days of life on their ID cards, but they are two of the great sensations of Barça's successful academy. The African winger has been one of the standouts in the two summer tests that the blaugranas have played. "Physically he's amazing. He's fast, strong, scores goals, left-footed, technically gifted... A very offensive player," they detail to ARA from Barça's stay in England.

An international with Spain's youth categories, in June he was nominated best player of the Under-17 European Championship. Ebrima received this recognition even though the Spanish team fell in the semifinals against Italy. He was a starter in all the matches Spain played, scoring one goal, four assists, and making 23 decisive passes. The Catalans Cesc Fàbregas, in 2004, and Bojan Krkic, in 2007, are the other two players from the Spanish national team who, until now, had received this distinction.

His father brought him to Catalonia when he was seven years old, seeking a better life for his son. "I wasn't very aware of it, I was a child. This Christmas I went to Gambia and I saw the reality. I am very happy to have come here. My father made a great effort to give us a better future. He has been through a lot so that the whole family could be here," the footballer explained to the media of the Spanish Football Federation a few months ago.

"I started playing football in my town, with friends. We played matches in the street, with goals made of two posts. It was a pretty difficult life. We played barefoot in the street. And school was harder than here because it was quite far from home and I had to walk many kilometers," he recalls. Last year he finished fourth in ESO, and highlights mathematics and biology as his favorite subjects.

His beginnings at Barça

With his family settled in the Mataró neighborhood of Cerdanyola (near Rocafonda, where Lamine Yamal is from), he didn't take long to join the neighborhood team, AEiLL Cerdanyola. He started playing thanks to a friend of his father, and the story of his signing for Barça is "quite peculiar," as Albert Puig, his first youth coach, recalls to ARA. "He was in the pre-benjamin category, and in these categories, part of scouting consists of looking at the standings and seeing which teams stand out. We had gone to see Cerdanyola, but he wasn't playing for them yet: he didn't have his federation card because it was being processed as he had only arrived from Africa a few months prior. People from the club told us that the best footballer wasn't playing yet," he recalls. "We were following the team because we also had references for Unai Jiménez [currently in Girona's youth team], and we went to see a match between Cerdanyola and Vilassar de Dalt. It was Ebrima's first game. It was a scandal".

That day Isidre Gil was also there, a scout of formative football in Maresme with many years of experience and one of the architects too of Lamine Yamal's signing for Barça. Gil, who would later write a report on him, coincided with Puig. "We had the luck to be the two of us there that day," explains the current sporting director of the Girona Academy. Puig alerted Marc Serra, coordinator of Barça's football 7. "I told him: 'Marc, I don't usually commit so quickly, but this is something out of the ordinary'. He had to be polished technically, but a very good level could already be glimpsed and physically he also stood out a lot, overcoming lines and opponents".

Albert Puig, one of the instigators of his signing

Since he didn't have a contract yet, the Barcelona club called him to train on Tuesdays with the pre-benjamí team. "The first day he came to train it was very cold, it was November, it was dark... and he was still, petrified. He did nothing. He blamed the change from the warm climate to the cold here a lot. He had only been in Catalonia for a few months, and those who hadn't seen him play told me 'Are you sure?'. It was just an anecdote because very soon he started to make a difference". Ebrima's rise would be unstoppable: when he was a first-year alevín, they moved him up with children from an older generation. This has been the constant of a footballer who, at 5 years old, already debuted with the reserve team. He is now doing pre-season with the first team and will move from the youth team to Barça Atlètic.

In his early days at Barça, he used to train three days a week with a club taxi. For matches, since his father didn't have a car, he was often accompanied by good family friends. In his first year as an infantil, he came to live at La Masia. Son of a humble family, his parents worked many hours away from home and it was decided, as has been done with other footballers like Lamine Yamal himself or former Barcelona player Ilaix Moriba, that he would reside at La Masia. "He can play as a winger, he has often played on his weaker foot in the academy, but he is an interior player to play between the lines, who can also come to collect the ball deep. Not so much for him to develop from passing, but for his ability to drive and break lines with the ball. He also has a lot of drive into the box and scores a lot of goals," concludes Puig.