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Luis José Pinguinha is an encyclopedia of Portuguese youth soccer, and has seen thousands of players pass through his country on their way to the highest level, but Cristiano Ronaldo is a success story that has already seen Ansu Fati achieve 14 things faster than him .
Ronaldo enjoyed the best years of his career at Real Madrid, while Barcelona are hopeful that Fati will do so with them.
“I have seen players, some who were going to be a phenomenon but were caught by drugs and jail, like Fabio Paim,” Pinguinha recalled in an interview with MARCA.
“Cristiano came with Sporting CP to the tournament we organized when he was 11 years old, and I had reached an agreement with the agency that whoever won the award for the best player of the tournament could spend a week in an apartment in the Algarve.
“He was the best player, but a Sporting coach asked me not to choose him because he was from a very poor family in Madeira and couldn’t afford to go.”
That player was a young Cristiano Ronaldo, and almost a decade later, Pinguinha was on hand to witness the glow of another star, now known as Ansu Fati, while he was at a youth tournament in Seville.
“I went to the field to watch games and I quickly saw a player, I asked in a low voice who this particular child was, and they told me that he was born in 2002 but that he played in an age group two years older because everything was so good.” . easy for him, “he added.
“He could use both feet, he was a phenomenon, he always played with his head up and he was able to dribble and kick with the bike.
“It was football played with joy and everything seemed incredibly natural.”
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“His father was from Guinea Bissau, the first Portuguese colony to achieve independence and his father was working in Portugal before going to Spain, he wanted to bring his family to Portugal before Spain,” he confirmed.
The name of a young Fati reached the Portuguese Football Federation and his family was called to try to persuade him to represent Portugal, but it was too late.
However, in 2019 everything could have changed when Sporting saw that the promising talent had not yet returned to sign for Barcelona.
The Lisbon club were cited with figures that were considered exorbitant for a quarry player and, ultimately, no agreement was reached.
“Sporting wanted him to start in the academy and progress gradually,” declared Pinguinha.
“However, his people wanted him to have a direct contract with the senior team and I think that’s why no agreement was reached.”
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After the shock Fati had on his international debut in September, Cristiano Ronaldo would soon after score his 100th goal for Portugal.
He is a legend of the game and has been a benchmark for Iberian soccer, having been highly revered both in Madrid and in his home country.
Fati, by comparison, is nothing more than an international rookie, yet the graph below shows that he has already accomplished 14 things at a younger age than Ronaldo could.
Source: m.allfootballapp.com
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