Everton midfielder Amadou Onana’s journey to the club has been labelled a ‘fairytale’ as he gears up to appear at the World Cup.
Onana has been impressing for Everton this season after arriving in a €35m deal from Lille as part of the Blues’ summer rebuild.
He has established himself as a key player for Frank Lampard, with a series of impressive performances in the heart of the midfield alongside Idrissa Gana Gueye and Alex Iwobi.
His performances haven’t gone unnoticed, with him earning a call up to Roberto Martinez’s Belgium squad for the World Cup in Qatar this month.
He is expected to play some sort of role for the Red Devils, with many calling for him to start in midfield ahead of more experienced players such as Axel Witsel.
Any sort or role would be the latest big step in a rapidly developing career for the Everton man, who was rejected by Anderlecht as a youth player.
He instead went to Zulte Waregem’s youth side before joining Hoffenheim’s youth set up and playing there for three years before a move to Lille in August last year.
He’s now an established Premier League star at the World Cup, and the head of Anderlecht’s youth training programme Jean Kindermans believes it’s a fairy-tale story for younger players.
“The past is the past,” Bruzz report him saying.
“These kinds of exceptional cases are peculiar to football, because those tests in youth are snapshots.
“At that time with us, Amadou was not yet the player he is now. And the competition in his line-up was also huge, with top players like Yari Verschaeren.
“You can only be satisfied that that boy made it via a diversion anyway, his story is really a fairytale.
“He has become a phenomenal player, whom I can really enjoy. All praise and respect for his willpower and patience, and that of his sister of course.”
