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At the end of the summer of 2009, just a decade ago, a six-year-old boy "quite tall for his age, very thin" appeared barefoot and in a swimsuit in the municipal field of Herrera, a town of 6,200 inhabitants near Puente Genil, and began to make mischief. "It was spectacular, we were amazed, we did not know where it had come from, but it was clear that he knew how to play: nobody took the ball away from him," recalls the coordinator of the local club, Joaquín Sánchez, who quickly approached him to ask: "With whom Viennese? Where do you live?". The answers amazed him. Ansu Fati , the promise that on Sunday became the second youngest debutante in the history of Barcelona, ​​had just arrived in Spain from Guinea Bissau and, after much insisting to the father without success, had decided to look for the football field closest to his older brother, Braima, who was 11 years old at the time.

Until that day, in fact, his father, Bori, had no idea of ​​the child's abilities. «I didn't even know that I had played in Guinea. He supposed he had rallied in the street, but nothing more. He told me that he wanted to play, to take him to the field, but when I managed to regroup the family I had many things to do and didn't have time. One day I get to work and I find neighbors and children at the door of my house. 'Do you know what you have here? You have to see it. This kid has to play at the club, 'they tell me. And since then he has not stopped, ”Cope Bori Fati said on Sunday, who at that time had a private job: he was the driver who led the mayor of Marinaleda, the unionist Juan Manuel Sánchez Gordillo (IU) , from the town to the Parliament of Andalusia in Seville.

"I know where we came from"

Fati, during the match against Betis.

His story is Ansu's story because football is actually inherited. Bori Fati was a semi-professional player in clubs like Benfica de Bissau until 1998, when his wife, María de Lourdes Vieira, became pregnant with Braima and he went to Portugal to find a livelihood for the family. "I know where we came from, I know where we came from," he said Sunday excitedly. In the neighboring country he worked for four years and in 2001 he decided to move to Spain. By a brother he knew that labor was needed in the construction of the AVE line between Córdoba and Málaga and in Herrera he settled down to no longer move. In the village they remember how, when they finished the work on the train, Bori Fati offered himself for all possible jobs, bricklayer, waiter, garbage man, and how, due to his friendly nature, he received the help of several neighbors. For a time, in fact, he was even housed in a City Hall property reserved for foreign teachers. Difficult times that ended in 2008 when he started working for Sánchez Gordillo and found the economic stability necessary to reunite with the whole family.

Then Ansu appeared, soccer, and, in a few months, many gentlemen dressed in his door: first Pablo Blanco, quarry director of Seville, who had seen him in a tournament and took him to the Nervian club, and a year later, Albert Puig, of Barcelona, ​​and Paco de Gracia, of Real Madrid. "Madrid offered me better conditions, money, house, everything, but I chose Barça because Valdebebas then had no residence and did not want the kid to go out there every day and get lost," Bori Fati admitted about a time that was not easy . For the whole family, but especially for your child. With nine years, just three summers after arriving in Spain, he had to move again and start living with a lot of strangers in La Masia. With the help of the representative Josep María Minguella, his mother spent many months in the city, but it also cost. «It was very hard for him. If Ansu is now where he is, it is because, above all, he likes football. He has an incredible passion, ”says Jordi Figueroa, who was his coach in the prebenjamín of Herrera and who remembers the obstacles that the debutante has already encountered in Primera. In mid-2014 he spent months without playing for the sanction of FIFA to Barcelona and at the end of 2015 the tibia and the fibula of the right leg were broken.

«I didn't believe it. I've stayed in the field for a while because I didn't believe it, ”commented the 16-year-old boy who, according to La Masia workers, complies with his studies and routine and, as soon as he has free, , meets with his parents in the apartment they rented last year in Sant Feliu de Llobregat. When Ansu went up to Juvenile B, his father Bori asked for a leave in the public garbage collection company he entered after stopping driving for Sánchez Gordillo and now it is difficult for him to return to work. As a representative of his son, in July he signed the renewal with Barcelona until 2022 with a 100 million clause and now he has a tough decision ahead: Fati could play for Portugal if he was summoned, but he hopes for Spanish nationalization to one day be able to be in the selection.

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