After the early debuts of Ansu Fati two seasons ago, and Pedri the last, Barça may be facing the discovery of a new talent at the start of the 2021-22 season. Yusuf Demir (2-6-2003, Vienna), second youngest foreign player to debut in LaLiga (17 years and 80 days) with Barça, only ahead of Messi, has found himself, almost involuntarily, with a gap in the team you can take advantage of if you give the level.
The marches of Messi and Griezmann and Dembélé's injury have left Barça without players who move for the position of extreme or false right extreme. Saving the distances, the left-hander Demir can do a similar function by going from the outside in and moving through more interior positions. Furthermore, the outlook for the front has been complicated in the last hours with Braithwaite's injury, which has joined Agüero's. That's why Koeman has only two pure forwards, Memphis and Luuk de Jong. At this point, Demir may be playing a position with Coutinho if Barça play 4-3-3.
Coming from Rapid Vienna, a club to which Barça paid 500,000 euros for his transfer, Demir, second Austrian in the history of the Barça club after the great Krankl, excited in the preseason games against Stuttgart, Leipzig and Juventus. So much so that information appeared that they assumed that Mateu Alemany and Ramon Planes were willing to disburse the 10 million euros that it would cost Barça to take ownership of the player.
Demir's debut, however, was not brilliant. “It cost me, the game had a lot of intensity,” he acknowledged after premiering at San Mamés, where in the first minutes he got stuck with the ball and it was almost difficult for him to maintain verticality. The technicians speak wonders of Demir's conditions and he is in a perfect setting to grab the opportunity of a lifetime. Be it from the start or, more likely, from the bench, Demir is in front of an unexpected showcase.