Barcelona believe Ansu Fati to be the next transcendent star to play for the club, despite his injury hit 2020/21 campaign, and the young Spaniard has made clear just how difficult it was to initially make the decision to join La Masia.
Fati was actually a secondary priority for Los Cules at the time, who were instead focused on signing Ansu’s brother.
“Barcelona signed my brother first and then me, it was difficult for to come to Barcelona, because I had been in Seville my entire life,” Fati detailed in Esquire magazine.
“My friends took good care of me. However, it was difficult for me to get here, but after arriving I never wanted to leave.”
After breaking into the senior team during the 2019/20 season, it was expected that the teenager would become an ever-present within Ronald Koeman‘s team this term, however a serious knee injury has prevented that from happening.
Ansu Fati
Fati hasn’t touched the pitch since November 7, although he remains positive about his return and has echoed the sentiment that young players should try and avoid social networking websites.
“When it was the boom period after my debut, I didn’t look at social media too much, because I knew people would be talking about me,” Fati added.
“If you buy into that talk too much, you don’t perform in the same way.
“Besides, reaching the first-team and making your debut isn’t the most difficult thing, the real challenge is to be there for many years.”
Choosing Spain over Guinea Bissau
“I actually found out about my international call-up through a MARCA notification that my agent received,” Fati continued.
The topic of Fati‘s international eligibility is one which clouded much of his early months as a Barcelona first team player, with his country of birth, Guinea Bissau, wanting to call him up to their senior team immediately.
However, in Spain there was an entirely different discussion going on, with the Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) hoping to eventually ensure Fati could represent La Roja, which is what the player chose to do, despite only arriving in Spain in 2009 as a seven-year-old.
“We didn’t know the language and we didn’t know any other people,” Fati described.
“Coming to a new place is scary because you don’t know what you’re going to find. However, that was compensated by the joy of being reunited with my father.”
