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, 17 years old, are those who have lived the fewest days 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 a marvel. 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 U-17 European Championship. Ebrima received this recognition despite the Spanish team falling 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 games in the street, with goals made of two posts. It was a quite 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's 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 rankings and seeing which teams stand out. We had gone to see Cerdanyola, but he wasn't playing there yet: he didn't have the federation license because it was being processed as he had only recently arrived from Africa. 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 also there was Isidre Gil, a scout for formative football in Maresme with many years of experience and one of the architects also of the signing of Lamine Yamal for Barça. Gil, who would later write a report on him, coincided with Puig. "We were lucky to be the two of us there that day," explains the current sporting director of the Girona Academy. Puig alerted Marc Serra, coordinator of blaugrana's football 7. "I told him: 'Marc, normally I don't 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 intuited and physically he also stood out a lot, overcoming lines and opponents'.

Albert Puig, one of the promoters of his signing

Since he didn't have a contract yet, the Barça club summoned 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 wasn't doing anything. 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, he was already moved up with children from an older generation. This has been the constant of a footballer who, at 15 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 go to training three days a week by 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 started living 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 Barça player Ilaix Moriba, that he would reside at La Masia. "He can play as a winger, he has often played inverted 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 penetration into the box and scores a lot of goals," concludes Puig.