New adventure for the striker born in ’04. Its destination is waiting to be discovered: the Brattvåg among the Norwegian fjords.
For those like us who de Young Italy he is passionate about youth football, he will easily remember Leonardo Rossia central striker born in 2004 who a few years ago was talked about by enchanting and scoring, already at a young age, with the shirt of Milan. His has been a strange career, surprising both in his development phase in the youth team and now that he is playing among the grown-ups. However, before discovering the exotic destination he has chosen to leave this season, let’s go back and discover his journey.
We de Young Italy we already did a focus on him in November 2020 and defined it “panzer”. In that period he played in the Under 17 championship with the Milan shirt, a team he joined very early after starting out in Rome (he was born in the capital). He remained with the Rossoneri for four seasons, including the one disastrous due to Covid, scoring in abundance from the Under 16s to the Primavera. Just think: his surname is Rossi, ideal for a striker, he plays for Milan, he is physically strong but still skilled in individual technique, and above all he scores many goals. Destiny seemed to have already knocked on his door. Then, however, something seemed to “break”.
In September 2022 he was sold to the Primavera del Napleswhere he remained for a season and a half, and in January 2024 he ended up at Lleida Esportiu, in Catalonia, which even plays in the Spanish fourth division. Here he is welcomed with great fanfare, but the Catalan experience evidently must not have gone very well, since at the beginning of this season he chose an even more exotic place as his destination: the Brattvågin the Norwegian third division. Here, at the court of the young coach (only thirty-eight years old) Thomas Pedersen, he seems to have rediscovered a security and continuity that he had been missing for a while.
Of course, at this point in his career a question arises: if after his excellent performance in the youth team this talent has now ended up in the Norwegian third division, will he still have time to explode and dedicate himself to great football? The answer certainly depends on him and how he will be able to continue his career, but our reflection concerns the fact that Scandinavian football, and Norwegian football in particular, in recent years it has had excellent investments and improvements, which have made different talents blossom at a national level too.
Certainly, from this point of view, the two who immediately catch the eye could be Martin Ødegaard, the captain of Arsenal, and of course Erling Haaland, who could be points of reference not only for this type of football that is emerging, but also for our Leonardo, who perhaps arrived right there, between the fjords and the cold, to grow as the best striker ever at the moment.