Milan (AFP)

Still a teenager, he left Gambia alone and crossed the Mediterranean; just grown up, he scored his first Serie A goal on the lawn of the great Inter Milan on Sunday: the fate of 18-year-old Musa Juwara has the air of a Hollywood film.

Entering the game 25 minutes from the end of the match, Juwara equalized in the 74th minute at San Siro. According to an assistant to Sinisa Mihajlovic, the Serbian coach would have predicted the goal to come. "We bring Juwara in. With the mess he is going to put in, you will see that he will score."

A few minutes after Juwara's tying goal, that of 2-1 and Bologna's victory on the field of the 3rd in Serie A was registered by another young Gambian, another Musa, Barrow.

"I dedicate this goal to my family and to everyone who has helped me along the way," said Juwara after the game.

- Collected by an NGO -

There have been people who helped him. But the young attacker also managed to manage on his own along a route told since Sunday by all the Italian media and which led him in seven months from Gambia to Messina, Sicily, via Senegal, Mali , Burkina Faso, Niger and Libya.

Behind him, Juwara, then 14, leaves his mother and grandfather, who raised him. Collected with 500 other migrants by the ship of a German NGO after seven months of journey, he confessed one last fear when disembarking, in June 2016: "I don't know how to swim".

In Italy, he is welcomed by a couple who will help him in the difficult steps to obtain a player's license, which the federation does not then issue to unaccompanied minors.

He still manages to sign at Chievo Verona in 2017. And, quickly, shines in the youth categories. Fan of Eden Hazard, the Gambian even made tests at Inter Milan and Juventus, where he marveled at meeting the Ballon d'Or Pavel Nedved.

But the two giants do not follow up and, in the summer of 2019, he joined Bologna where Mihajlovic spotted him. In Emilia-Romagna, the young Juwara found the net: 11 goals in 16 Primavera matches, the youth team championship, performances which quickly earned him the first team.

- By scooter -

With his salary of 3000 euros per month and his arrivals at the scooter training center, Juwara is still far from the normal life of calcio professionals.

But he has integrated the rotation, for bouts of matches, for the moment: four minutes against AS Rome, 11 against Genoa and eight against Udinese before the interruption; eight again when receiving Juventus for the resumption of the championship. And 25, therefore, against Inter, with this first liberating goal.

"I thank the coach so much for trusting me against Inter, I am so happy to have scored my first goal," he said. "It is a dream come true for me, I will remember it for the rest of my life," he continued.

"I'm very happy for the other Musa," said Musa Barrow, the other goalscorer on Sunday. "After the match, I asked him for his jersey because he was really good."

The road has been long, very long, since his childhood in The Gambia. But Juwara's journey may still be in its infancy.

Bologna would not ask for anything better. Ninth, the Emilia-Romagna club is not far - five points - from AC Milan and from 7th place, qualifying for the Europa League.

The young Juwara, who crossed Africa and the Mediterranean to join the Old Continent, could he offer his club an end of the season in cannonball to snatch a qualification for the Europa League? The story would be beautiful. It already is.

© 2020 AFP