PHILADELPHIA -- Ecuador left back Piero Hincapié knew what was coming each time the ball worked its way out to Yan Diomande on Cote d'Ivoire's right wing. He knew it in a general, abstract sense -- something bad and threatening to the goal he was tasked with defending -- but in a specific, concrete way, he had absolutely no clue. Nobody did.
Would Diomande flick the ball into space and challenge him to a foot race, even somebody as athletic as Hincapié -- who started for Arsenal, the newly minted Premier League champions and UEFA Champions League finalists just last month, lest we forget -- was doomed to lose?
Would he engage him with a feint and swerve past him, the ball either stuck to his boot or pinballing from one to the other?
Would he stand him up, freezing him momentarily, and using those precious seconds to thread the ball to a marauding teammate?
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We can confidently surmise that's how Hincapié felt, because that's what the 68,000-strong crowd in South Philadelphia felt each time the ball came to Diomande, whether to his feet or in space. And we saw the 19-year-old winger do all of the above and more, running one of the most accomplished defensive fullbacks around ragged for 57 minutes until his coach, Emerse Fae, sent on Amad Diallo and mercifully switched Diomande to the other wing.
By that stage, Diomande was effectively getting double-teamed at every turn, and his performance would come to dominate the chatter around the game. More than Ecuador, who hit the woodwork three times and were unlucky to open the tournament with a defeat. More than Wilfried Singo and Amad Diallo, who combined on the winning goal in the final minutes -- the former with an improbable lung-bursting run and lasered cross, the latter with a precision left-foot side-foot finish.
Casual fans will be familiar with him because he's dominating the transfer chatter in Europe, linked one day with reigning European champions Paris Saint-Germain (as if they need a guy who is Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and Ousmane Dembélé rolled into one) and the next with Liverpool, where he would inherit the flank patrolled with distinction by Mohamed Salah for the best part of the last decade. Hype videos such as this one get cut into ribbons and enflame social media, but to see him in the flesh is to appreciate a whole other side of him that doesn't always come through on our screens.
Diomande's decision-making against Ecuador went far beyond his teenage years. Far from being a one-trick, one-on-one merchant -- though there was plenty of that, as demonstrated by his four successful dribbles past Hincapié -- there's an unselfishness and a team ethos to his movements and the choices he makes. Athleticism, raw speed and tricky feet might have put him on the map, but his vision and composure are keeping him there.
"What can I say? I can't put it into words," his coach, Fae, said after the game. "He's a kid who works hard, has a real team spirit, laughs with everyone and he listens. He listens to the coaching staff whenever we give advice and he tries to do his best, as he's told. It's easy to work with someone like Yan."
In other words, he's coachable -- a quality that players with his skill set don't always possess. And for all the razzmatazz he brought against Ecuador, there was little that was superfluous. Coaches love that, too.
The odd thing is that unlike many of his precocious peers (dare I mention Lamine Yamal in the same article? I think I just did...) Diomande is not a product of a traditional academy pathway. At 15, four years ago, he was living in Florida and playing for DME Academy, one of those academies designed to develop U.S. college athletes whose soccer program dates all the way back to ... May 2021, a few months before he arrived. Before this season his entire professional résumé consisted of six starts for Leganes in LaLiga.
No wonder he's "coachable," you might conclude: He hasn't had very much of it, certainly not the traditional kind that clips wings and annoys budding superstars.
Of course, nobody wants to get carried away -- though the fact that he had 12 goals and eight assists as a teenager this past season suggests we're not -- but his performance against a tough side such as Ecuador, which features two defenders who started in the Champions League finale (Hincapié and William Pacho) as well as the world's most expensive defensive midfielder (Moisés Caicedo) is hard to ignore.
