The mobile plans of the Genoa youth sector facilitate and anticipate the integration of a profile in a higher lever, in a context of players who are older than the “underleverage” boy, as they say in the jargon. Playing matches is important, but sometimes training sessions, daily living and weeks spent in a differently stimulating environment compared to the canonical and usual one are even more decisive: the more or less marked responses that come from the player are truthful, and not only for a sense of competitive naivety that still distinguishes the minor.
There are many interesting profiles of the Genoa youth team, which is celebrating a superlative year, which is still ongoing, with five out of six teams in the Scudetto play-offs (from Under 13 to U16, and U18): article 1 of the current Code Sbravati establishes the valorization of the young man but, in this season in particular, the profile of the individual training has been enriched by the results on the field. In other words, the well-known and atavistic structural and financial gap that the Grifone youth academy is forced to pay with respect to other clubs, no longer only first-tier clubs, has been subverted by three elements that ignore the comforts and presence of the ‘hot water in the showers beyond any reasonable doubt: belonging, meritocracy and competence.
Quod bam. We were talking about the best profiles of the rossoblù house sown not only among the fields of Multedo and Begato, of Pra’ and Lagaccio, like small vegetable gardens of a large pépinière whose cardinal points are thirty-six kilometers apart. Thus, comparing at the end of the season the scorers of the youth teams that are under the Primavera, considered transversally a sort of antechamber of professionalism, it emerges that six Genoa players have scored in two selections: Scaglione, Ahanor, Ekhator, Papastylianou, Ghirardello and Roman. Only Honest Ahanor has scored in three different leagues.
Scaglione, taken from Andora at the age of ten, is a Ligurian born in 2010 who plays under 15 in the Under 15s: he scored 7 goals with coach Jacopo Sbravati before fracturing his shoulder in Turin while playing with the same age group in the 14s, an injury which missed the final part of the season and the consequent play-offs. Jeff Ekhator, rossoblù since football school, accelerated his growth following the loan of Fini (’06) to Standard Liège: a striker capable of scoring in the Under 18s as in the Primavera who excels in speed in the open field, darting with leg. And then Ahanor, born in Italy in 2008 and coming from Progetto Atletico e Officina Atletica, used to playing under the age of 17 for three years, took up space in the Under 17, 18 and Primavera teams, scoring against three different types of opponents, all more bigger than him.
Finally, the spring trio Papastylianou, Ghirardello and Romano also scored in the Under 18s. The Cypriot, who made his debut in his country’s Under 21s in March, needed to mentally unblock himself after a long period without goals; the same goes for Ghirardello who decided the first leg of the Primavera derby only to then shut down his prolificacy for almost six months, so thanks to a different level of category with the U18 he scored an extra goal (4 to 3) in the half weather. Romano is a discussion in itself because the talented Under 19 national team also scored with the 18 in a match for which he had been called up to support Mr. Ruotolo’s rossoblù team.
Six talents, six different stories. A common denominator: Genoa.
