World Cup One to Watch: Ansu Fati

Excitement is starting to build all over the world of football as the 2022 FIFA World Cup is mere days away.

For the players, such huge tournaments are the biggest stages they can get to showcase their talents. Nowhere does this ring truer than for under-23 talents.

Therefore, we will be taking a look at a number of young talents who are primed to impress in Qatar this winter.

Today Thom Harris joins us to discuss Ansu Fati.

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Such is the prodigious talent of Anssumane Fati Vieira, that even at 20 years of age, with barely 42 full matches of football to his name, it already feels as if we have missed so much. 

Since his first professional appearance on 25th August 2019, Fati has featured in 61 different games and has missed 71 through injury. 

First a knee issue, then a hamstring problem, then the knee, again, Barcelona’s shining star has suffered two career-defining setbacks before most have a career to set back. 

In Spain, there seems to be tension whenever Ansu Fati plays. No one wants to see him lose that freedom - the ability to do whatever he wants with the ball. 

No one wants to see him lose that glide, that elegant, confident stride of a player who knows he is better than the rest. And no one, most importantly, wants to see him lose his “gol”. Because if anybody “has gol”, as the Spanish like to say, it would be the youngest debutant, and youngest goal-scorer, of one of Iberia’s greatest clubs. 

With just three full 90-minute matches completed in his three-year career, having played only 700 of a possible 1800 minutes for Xavi this season, it was perhaps a surprise, and certainly, a gamble, to see Ansu Fati called up for Spain this winter. However, in the squad that he is in, and with the manager that he has, do not be surprised to see one of Luis Enrique’s least-capped luchadores take centre stage. 

A rapid rise to the top

Born in Guinea-Bissau in October 2002, a young Ansu followed his family to southern Spain when his older brother signed for Sevilla. Joining La Masia aged 10, he formed a scarcely-believable strike partnership with Takefusa Kubo for Barcelona’s U11 side, allegedly combining for 129 goals in 29 games with the Japanese superstar now plying his trade for Real Sociedad. 

A transfer ban imposed on the club saw a 13-year-old Kubo return to Japan, while Fati was forced to sit out for two seasons, continuing in training with the club. Scoring his first goal for the under-18’s on his comeback, however, at the age of 15 years, 10 months, and eight days, a record-breaking Fati was eventually fast-tracked straight into the first team, having never played a game for the reserve side before making an unprecedented LaLiga debut at the age of just 16.

Incredibly, just six days later, came his first top-flight goal. After coming off the bench at half-time, a five-foot-eight teenager rose highest to meet a floated Carles Pérez cross at El Sadar, before flexing his neck muscles to guide a perfectly-placed header into the corner from 12 yards out, celebrating with the calmness of an assassin, as if he had done it, on the biggest stage, hundreds of times before.