West Ham agree’s £35.5m deal for Sticker….
Gianluca Scamacca is in demand and it is easy to see why. He is a 6’5″ Italy international striker who scored 16 times in Serie A last season, a man capable of all sorts of goals. The only surprise is the route that he has taken to the top.
At 23, Scamacca is both early phenomenon and late bloomer. Identified at 15 as one of the brightest talents in Europe, twice he travelled to the Netherlands as a teenager in search of opportunity. But he was still out on loan at Ascoli in Serie B at the age of 21.
Now, after shining for Sassuolo, he is not only seen as the striker around whom Italy should build their attack, but also a man who can command a fee in excess of £40m given that he might just be the heir to Zlatan Ibrahimovic. The big man with the dancing feet.
The reason for the delay in his emergence is confusing given his frame. This was what made him impossible to miss as a young teen. Defenders would bounce off him. Goalkeepers were unable to stop his shots even if they found themselves in the way of them.
Scamacca knew he needed to be tested and that was not happening at Roma. PSV provided the pathway. He started with the U17s. “He scored goals.” Moved on to the U19s. “He scored more goals.” And made his professional debut soon after his 17th birthday.
Jansen was the coach who gave Scamacca his debut with Jong PSV, the U23 team that was playing in the Eerste Divisie, the second tier of football in the Netherlands. It came in an away win over VVV-Venlo in January 2016 when he replaced Steven Bergwijn.
“He was a talented kid who had the physical side of it,” Jansen explains. “When he was at AS Roma, he beat them all because he was physically much stronger than anyone else on the pitch. The challenge in Holland was to develop his understanding of the game.
When he came to Holland, we challenged him to make sure he was also developing and progressing in terms of that understanding. The physical part was not a problem, but the mental part was the challenge – dealing with mature guys. That took a little while.”
The body was ready but the mind had to catch up.
He had support. Mark van Bommel spoke to him in Italian. Ruud van Nistelrooy knew everything there is to know about scoring goals. “They were assistant coaches working across the different age groups. Van Nistelrooy had a specific eye for the attackers.”
