Inter's youth academy and scouting system has begun to produce and find a decent amount of talent in last years. Amongst the current bunch who are one step away from big football, one player seems to be head and shoulders above his team-mates. Not literally as he is just above 170 centimeters, but in terms of ability. His name is Daniel Bessa.
He was born in Sao Paulo but with Italian heritage. Inter noticed him when he was playing for Atletico Paranaense’s youth team and brought him to Italy in 2008 (if you can speak Italian, read more about the interesting story of his arrival
here). He turned 19 this month but he has only broken onto the scene this season. He first gained wider recognition when he shined in few of Inter’s early friendlies, but he was eventually sent back to the Primavera side.
He has been the star of the show there, especially in the NextGen series where Inter reached semi-finals on Wednesday night, but despite that, he hasn’t gotten another chance to show himself with the first team and probably will not get one before the summer.
As Inter fan I had only seen him on limited occasions (one other full game before this game, some personal highlight videos and longer highlights of NextGen games), but when I have seen him, he has always looked as if he could and probably should play at better level than youth football. I thought it would be injustice to this talent if Inter brings in 1 or 2 new attacking names for first team without even trying him out. Even more so considering that Mauro Zarate is not offering anything to the team anyway.
However the game against Sporting in NextGen was a chance to check him out against a good opponent because Sporting had probably been hailed as the favorites of the tournament after the group stage alongside Barcelona.
Continue reading for the in-depth match report
here.