Amad Diallo: Who is Rangers' new £19m loan signing from Man Utd?
- Published
Amad Diallo's goal against Milan last season helped Manchester United into the Europa League quarter-finals
Amad Diallo could previously have sauntered through Glasgow largely unnoticed. Now he has the Rangers support abuzz with excitement after signing on loan from Manchester United.
The Ivory Coast winger is only 19 but already has a £19m move behind him, having joined United from Serie A side Atalanta a year ago.
Diallo comes with a big reputation and desire for first-team football. Who is the man Rangers have added to invigorate their title defence?
Messi comparison & scoring debut
Diallo's significant price tag hints at a special talent. Being compared to Lionel Messi by former Atalanta team-mate Papu Gomez did little to dampen the hype.
Born in Ivory Coast, Diallo moved to Italy as a child and, after impressing with a local amateur club, he had trials with Juventus, AC Milan and Inter before joining Atalanta at age 13.
Prolific at youth level, he was training with the first team within three years and quickly making an impression. "There are defenders in the first team that sometimes cannot stop him," said Gomez. "To stop him in training, we have to kick him! He plays like Messi."
Diallo crowned his first-team debut at 17 by scoring in a 7-1 Serie A thrashing of Udinese, alerting Europe's top clubs to his talent.
He featured just four times for Atalanta before Manchester United took him to Old Trafford a year ago in a deal that could rise to £37m.
The winger has three caps, all last year, for Ivory Coast and scored his first international goal in a friendly win over Burkina Faso in May.
Lacking game-time but ready to impress
The move to Rangers should benefit a gifted player chronically short of experience. Diallo's total first-team game time with Atalanta and Manchester United amounts to 390 minutes. At Atalanta he spent just 59 minutes on the pitch spread across four substitute appearances.
His nine outings for United, including three starts, have yielded one goal - in a Europa League last-16 tie with Milan last season - and two assists.
Rangers will hope Feyenoord's loss is their gain after Diallo's proposed loan move to the Dutch side last summer was scuppered by injury. The player has appeared once since, in the Champions League draw with Young Boys last month.
Although primarily a right winger, Diallo can play anywhere across the front line and offers pace and strength on the ball.
Rangers say he chose a move to Ibrox over an "array of options across the Premier League and in Europe", while the season-ending injury to Ianis Hagi provides the opportunity to showcase his quality.
Manager Giovanni van Bronckhorst has acted quickly to bring in Diallo a day after his side - missing Hagi and fellow attacking players Ryan Kent, Joe Aribo and Alfredo Morelos for various reasons - laboured to a 1-0 win over Livingston in the Scottish Premiership.
Diallo himself is relishing the chance to "test myself in many environments" as Rangers pursue a second successive Scottish title, with a mouthwatering Europa League knockout round play-off against Borussia Dortmund looming next month.
Diallo could make his debut in Saturday's league game at Ross County - then comes the prospect of an Old Firm baptism of fire in the colossal visit to face Celtic next Wednesday.
'He may yet turn out to be a prodigy'
Italian football journalist Gabriele Marcotti
The big question mark on Diallo is, he was at United for a year, we saw very, very little of him. He played mostly at under-23 level.
It's an interesting choice. I'm assuming Rangers have a plan of how to develop him, rather than just throw him in at the deep end.
They're getting a player who is hugely motivated and who was thought of as a prodigy and may yet turn out to be that because I can't emphasise enough this is a kid who was born in 2002.
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