Afena-Gyan, a chameleon pawn ready to amaze even Thiago Motta

From his debut with Mourinho to Montero's praise: Felix has restarted from Serie C and is ready to climb the Juve hierarchy

The name Felix Afena-Gyan became familiar to football fans one evening in November 2021. Mourinho's Roma were playing at Marassi against Genoa , led by new coach Shevchenko, a game that was stuck at 0-0 at least until a youngster from the Giallorossi's Primavera team entered the field: Afena-Gyan, a sprite who scored a brace in a few minutes and thus set the 0-2 scoreline in stone. After all, not much time has passed since that cold Ligurian night: the Ghanaian striker, who in the meantime had landed on loan at Juventus Next Gen on the last day of the transfer market, is still a young 21-year-old, the same age – to stay on the Juventus theme – as the recent revelation Savona. Yet, in other ways, that match seems very much like a now distant episode: almost three years have passed in between, spent between Serie A and Serie B with the shirts of Roma and Cremonese, during which the new Juventus player has not scored a single goal in the championship.

Afena-Gyan and the Next Gen

Until Saturday afternoon , at least, when Afena-Gyan embellished his Next Gen debut with a gem of rare beauty. The operation completed by sporting director Claudio Chiellini right on the gong of the summer session surprised for the way it was done, certainly not for the player's potential. Much of it still unexpressed. On Friday, in Biella, Afena-Gyan came on during the second half, but a few minutes against Catania were enough to confirm that he was facing a boy of a superior category. By virtue of the goal, good for the theme song of certain television programs in which a collage of goals with a high spectacular content is stitched together, but not only that: with a couple of accelerations sprouted in midfield, in fact, the Ghanaian striker sowed panic and split the Sicilian rearguard in two. To the point of raising the question as to why he decided to reset his career in this way, starting again from Serie C.

Montero's words, Mourinho and the future with Motta

A question that, half serious and half facetious, has also grazed his current coach : «Felix is ​​a nice guy, let's hope he infects the whole locker room with his cheerfulness: in such serious football, you also have to find a way to relax – Montero 's reflection –. And let's also hope we can appreciate his qualities a little more, that they don't immediately take him up...». Where by “up”, of course, we mean Thiago Motta's first team.  Promotion to the top floor is not in the plans of the black and white club: not for now, at least. Not for Afena-Gyan nor for Semedo, the other “out of category” signing of the last few hours of the transfer market. But it is also true that Thiago Motta has shown that he has rather clear ideas on the subject of developing young players. For him , his identity card is a worthless piece of paper; what counts is mental application and technical versatility. And Afena-Gyan, in this regard, is a chameleon pawn: he can act as an attacking winger, he can make an impact as a first striker. This is how he had convinced, with goals and performances, a totem of the bench like Mourinho, who had launched him in the first team between the championship and some snippets also in the Conference League then won in the final against Feyenoord.

The Portuguese coach was impressed by Afena-Gyan on and off the pitch, where there was no shortage of expressions of esteem and… rewards. Right after the brace at Marassi, in fact, the Special One had given his young talent a pair of shoes , rather expensive ones, that the attacker had “set his sights on”, in a skit in the Giallorossi locker room that then went viral on the web. That boy who grew up in the EurAfrica Academy, where he had been eyed by Simone Lo Schiavo and Morgan De Sanctis, has now become a man, matured on the pitch and beyond.

"I am grateful for the opportunity", his first words as a Juventus player , even if (for now) in the Next Gen version. On the pitch he showed up with platinum blonde hair and the number 3 on his back, but in a handful of actions he has shown that he attracts attention for very different reasons . Those that he now hopes will immerse him, at 21, in a second youth, from which he can be reborn at the highest competitive levels. Maybe, who knows, with the Juventus shirt. His mother, whose sacrifices allowed him to study and play football in Ghana and to whom he always gives the first dedication after a goal, would be proud. More than she already is.