This is not the first time Yan Diomande’s performances in North America have had everyone on the edge of their seats.
The now Ivory Coast international has been a breakout star at the 2026 World Cup, shining for his country on the biggest stage in football, and has earned widespread acclaim for his devastating ability in attack.
Diomande is valued at more than €100million (£86m; $114m), and Liverpool and Paris Saint-Germain have shown interest in signing him from RB Leipzig. The German club are adamant he is going nowhere, but at only 19 years old, the world is at Diomande’s feet.
And that has been the way for him since he arrived in the United States, then aged 15 and unable to speak English, to join DME Academy, an ‘elite sports academy and educational institution’ in Daytona Beach, Florida.
As part of an agreement with Rainbow Global, the agency he was signed to in Africa, DME Academy received video clips of African players and selected those they believed had the greatest talent and potential to join their programme in Florida, not only to play football but also to gain an education.
Todd Eason, then the director of soccer at DME Academy, was responsible for reviewing the video clips sent by Rainbow Global, and when he saw Diomande’s profile, it was effectively love at first sight.
“It was different,” Eason recalls to The Athletic when discussing the first time he saw Diomande’s showreel. “A lot of the time, the players that would come over weren’t yet representing their country, but once you get a national-level player like Yan, and I had a couple of others, it was different.”
After two years at DME Academy — including a spell with United Premier Soccer League side AS Frenzi near Orlando — and with offers to join Major League Soccer clubs, Diomande left for Spanish team Leganes — but now he is back in America, and showing MLS exactly what it let slip through the net.
Before arriving in Florida, Diomande had already played for the Ivory Coast Under-17s at the youth Africa Cup of Nations, with his performances in that tournament forming part of the video package sent to DME Academy.
Eason had not met or spoken — even online — to the kid before picking him up at the airport in 2022.
Notwithstanding the language barrier, Diomande, he remembers, was understandably “quiet and a little bit reserved” when initially settling into his new life in America, yet one thing was abundantly clear.
“You could tell that he understood it was his job to come over here and make it, to provide for his family,” Eason says. “This was a work event for him. That’s how mature he was when he got here. He saw himself as the father figure who was going to take care of his family. That was his personality.”
Diomande was a regular passenger in Eason’s car, often asking that Booba, a French rapper, be played through its speakers. Despite the language barrier, they would talk via Google Translate and, eventually, got to know each other and built a relationship that continues to endure.
“I’d ask him questions about himself, what he likes to do. It was very limited, but he would like that back and forth,” Eason adds. “I tried to really break those walls down and have him trust us. I was there to kind of take care of him and help him through his adolescence and to grow.
“He recognised that I was there to protect him and, through that, I was hoping that he would let his guard down and feel a lot more comfortable and be a little bit more outspoken about himself and family so that we could learn more about him.”
If it understandably took Diomande some time to come out of his shell off the pitch, there weren’t any reservations when it came to the 15-year-old showcasing his undeniable talent on it.
During his time at DME, the winger also played for Frenzi, where he was coached by Tyler Weston.
“It was exactly what you are seeing now on the TV,” Weston says of his first impressions from seeing Diomande on the pitch. “He knew exactly what touches to take, what direction to go and how to beat players and take players on.”
“He was different,” Eason adds on the same theme. “Whether it was his speed of thought, his technical ability, the control that he used, how he ran with the ball… it was something that we had never seen. He was just controlled in every manner of the game.”
As can often be the case with the best player on a pitch, the opposition tries to make life difficult by arriving late to a tackle and giving them a not-so-friendly message that they won’t have everything their own way in the game.
Weston says this wasn’t any different for Diomande. One key attribute, however, was that he always got back up. In that sense, he let his football do the talking, and there was an air of confidence that comes with being the biggest talent out there.
“They (opposing teams) would seek out how to create less space for him immediately, or do things that would prevent him from getting the ball,” Weston recalls. “But once he was on the ball, that was game, set, match.”
Diomande’s two years in Florida coincided with Frenzi winning the amateur UPSL Spring Season National Championship with a 2-1 win over Sporting Wichita SC in 2023. Unsurprisingly, the future Ivory Coast international scored both goals and was named the National Finals MVP.
So, how does arguably the best 16-year-old in American soccer at the time not end up joining one of the many MLS sides who asked about him?
The answer to that question, as explained by both Weston and Eason, is nuanced. In an ideal world for the MLS, Diomande is now playing for Colorado Rapids, who Eason said offered $1million for him, or one of the other teams who came to the table.
“Everybody was calling about Yan,” Eason says. “Everybody wanted him, but they couldn’t justify buying a 17-year-old that was still unknown for millions of dollars. They are only buying million-dollar players that are DPs.”
A DP is a designated player, a slot on an MLS roster reserved for a marquee player who can be paid above the standard salary cap at the expense of the team’s owner. Examples include Lionel Messi at Inter Miami and now Robert Lewandowski at Chicago Fire.
“A lot of clubs just didn’t put in the $5million that it would cost at that time. It’s just too much of a gamble for them,” says Eason.
The other side to this, as Weston points out, is that Diomande was never going to stay in North America, irrespective of whether a team wanted to use one of their designated player spots on him.
“He came here for a really good opportunity,” his former coach added. “I think once he looked at the opportunities, as well as where he was playing and how dominant he was playing, I think it really told him that he could go overseas and play.”
Diomande moved to Leganes in January 2025 before RB Leipzig activated his €20million release clause last July. And less than two years after leaving Florida, The Athletic reported he has chosen Paris Saint-Germain as his next destination if he leaves Leipzig in the current transfer window.
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