Yéremy Pino, the street talent that knocks down records
Yéremy Pino celebrates the fourth of his goals against Espanyol. / AFP
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Villarreal’s Canarian winger, the last exponent of overflowing and daring football in danger of extinction, signed the perfect match against Espanyol
In times in which football tends towards the scientific method, under the parameters of exhaustive physical preparation and tactical control of the boards, it is increasingly difficult to find a place for the romanticism of the game for the game, the enjoyment of a dribble and aesthetics above the result. “The extremes in football are an endangered species,” it has been said for years. The truth is that it is increasingly difficult to find pure frontmen, the kind that make the public rise from their seats with a fantasy dribbling stuck to the lime of the band.
Yéremy Pino belongs to that lineage, a footballer as insultingly young as he is electric and cheeky. A memorable afternoon at the Estadio de la Cerámica remains in history, with a poker against Espanyol that made him the first player to score four goals in a League match with a Villarreal shirt. It is not a minor matter according to the names that have been at the forefront of the Yellow Submarine in more than two decades among the best. In 53 dream minutes, the Canarian emulated Santi Mina, until then the only one under 20 capable of adding four goals in the same League match in the 21st century. He also surpassed nothing more and nothing less than Leo Messi, the most precocious until now to achieve a ‘hat-trick’ in a single part.
And it is that the player from Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, where he was born on October 20, 2002, is used to breaking records and standing out among the peers of his generation, to which Ansu Fati and Pedri also belong. He draws even more attention if one considers that his path to the elite did not pass from the earliest childhood through the best schools or the most prestigious quarries. Yéremy polished his technique on the street, playing with friends in the park or on the beach. There is still much of that in his football, less gripped by tactical rigor than is usual today.
“Street football is being lost,” warned the right-handed winger a few months ago, according to his first call-up with the senior Spanish team in October, when he was recruited by Luis Enrique for the final four of the League of Nations played in Milan and Turin. If two nuances define Yéremy Pino’s way of playing, these are courage and improvisation. An unquestionable talent for dribbling in small dimensions and speed and power when spaces appear, they form an explosive combination, as devastating for opposing defenses as it is attractive for the spectator. To these technical characteristics is added the mental disposition to try an overflow again despite the failure, since it is not a player carved within an ecosystem that promotes containment.
“He learned to play in training, but he learned that character and that quality on the street. That is a football that is being lost, and that learning is differential for children », corroborated Carmelo Pino, his father, in an interview a few months ago to the newspaper ‘As’. After growing up in the Barrio Atlántico, also the birthplace of other footballers from Gran Canaria such as Jesé Rodríguez or Jonathan Viera, and passing through the modest Huracán youth academy, Yéremy did not make the leap to the grassroots football structure of UD Las Palmas, the great club from the island, until 2013. Villarreal detected and valued that unique character to get ahead of Barça and undertake his signing in 2016, after a cadet championship of regional teams in which they conquered the Submarino scouts.
World Cup dream
Barely 19 years and four months old, a tender age to already add two absolute international caps with the Spanish team, goals in the Champions League and in the Europa League and nine goals in almost a hundred league games with Villarreal. “I’m young, but the club has made things a lot easier for me. I want to be here for many years. We are a quarry club. I’m very happy to continue here at home”, stated the Canarian player at the ceremony in which his renewal with Villarreal until June 2027 was announced. Tranquility and certainty to continue carving a diamond in the rough without subtracting one iota of freshness of the game forever.
Luis Enrique’s radar and the siren songs from the big European football clubs are back on the table. Beyond the national team window in March, with two friendlies for Spain against Albania and Iceland, the year is marked in red by the World Cup in Qatar in November and December. There is competition on the flanks of the Spanish attack, but Yéremy Pino is on the list of candidates and dreams of giving La Roja dribbling, overflow and verticality down the flank, those hallmarks of lifelong football that delight the eye in times of tactical and physical rigor.
One moment please! ✋
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