From Harry Kewell, to Daniel Arzani, to Garang Kuol. There have been some incredible teenagers who have burst onto the scene in Australia.
And another looks set to follow the same well-trodden path to stardom.
Nestory Irankunda added another highlight to his already incredible showreel on Sunday afternoon, scoring an absolute cracker to level the scores for Adelaide United in the dying moments of their 1-1 draw with rivals Melbourne Victory in the Pride Cup.
READ: He doesn’t practice tap-ins, just worldies – Nestory Irankunda explains his ‘Ronaldo-esque’ stunner
Adelaide have been cautious with how they ease Irankunda into action, not wanting to throw him into the deep end too quickly off the back of his impressive run of substitute appearances. The teenager has scored two goals in 11 games off the bench – a total of 228 minutes.
On the Official Isuzu UTE A-League Podcast, the crew discussed what’s next for the 17-year-old as he continues to gain more and more momentum which each passing week – with the idea floated that the Socceroos should look at potentially bringing him into camp at some point.
Should he be called up at some point in the next 12 months, he will be following in the footsteps of Kewell and Kuol – who earned their national team debuts at the age of 17.
“There’s some really interesting calls to be made there,” KEEPUP‘s Tom Smithies said.
“On the club front, I don’t think there’s a rush. Garang Kuol, there was almost like a momentum about him like he wanted to go. In some ways, I thought he was ready to go. I think Irankunda could well learn from the arm around the shoulder from Carl Veart at being used in small doses, learning his craft. He’s nowhere near the finished article.
“I don’t think we need to make it too much, too young for him because he’s such a special talent, though he needs careful managing.
“Internationally, there’s a lot of youth football coming up this year and in many ways it’s going to be better for him, I think to be playing full matches against… difficult opponents, different styles of play.
I’m sure he’ll get an international call up, a full senior call up at some point this year. We’ve got a lot of friendlies coming up this year.
“I reckon Graham Arnold will, partly because of his role with the youth teams, will want to see Irankunda first-hand, but I reckon there’s more to be gained in the long run by some careful handling of Irankunda.”
Host Daniel Garb agreed, believing it may be beneficial to expose Irankunda to the rigours of the senior Socceroos set-up.
“I wonder if it’s, with all that in mind, to just bring him into a Socceroos camp,
he said.
Yes, that comes with a lot of hype and pressure, but he may need to be exposed to that sooner rather than later. Get it out of the way. Bring him in. Deal with it now.
“We’re not necessarily going to play you in an Australian game, but get in the camp. See what it’s all about. Show him the love, show him that this is the team for him in the future.
“Give him an aspiration to be a key player in this team in years to come and just get him in the fold and give him that confidence, but also expose him to a bit more limelight outside of Adelaide which I think he’s going to have to adjust to at some stage.”
However, KEEPUP’s James Dodd believes patience is the key with Irankunda and wants to see a greater body of work from the 17-year-old.
“I think the biggest thing that Nestory Irankunda needs is is patience from everybody,” Dodd said.
“We see the highlights reel, we see a 17-year-old scoring one in the top corner and routinely week in, week out and we think wow, this kid is going to be the next Kylian Mbappe or whoever it might be.
“He needs to prove first and foremost that he’s not just an impact player and at 17 years of age, he’s done a wonderful job so far, but Carl Veart will know that there’s a reason why he’s bringing him on as a substitute all the time because he’s not physically ready to do it week in week out for 90 minutes. But also maybe mentally and his approach to professional football is not quite there.
“He needs to learn what being a professional is, now maybe as you said Garby, if you were to introduce him into a Socceroos camp, see, this is what it’s like, this is how it’s going to be, you’re going to look at people like Mat Ryan at training, Aaron Mooy.
“They’re going to go okay, so this is how a professional footballer behaves and this is how they get to the next level where they can be consistent in their life on the pitch and off the pitch as well.
By all means, it’s so good to get excited about him but I think the most important thing he needs is time and patience.
Who is the best Aussie teenager of all-time?
In the spirit of Irankunda’s impressive showing, the crew rattled off the best Australian teenagers that they’ve seen come through the ranks.
Their choices varied significantly.
“He wasn’t quite a teenager, but in football terms he was. I remember getting a call from Nike many years ago to say that this young Aussie kid had got into the top 100 players to go to the Nike Chance,” Smithies said.
“I did an interview with him, he was terrified. And then I said to him, let’s keep in touch and he texted me to say he got into the final. He was the last one of the six that was chosen to go to the Nike Academy in the UK.
I’m talking of course about Tom Rogic. Just from that point from the moment he signed for the Mariners. I used to love going to see them play, those moments where he ran at teams.
“No one else in the league was doing it really at the time and he was just this brilliant, exciting talent.”
Dodd, meanwhile, selected two Macarthur FC attackers: “Initially one of the players that I first saw come through and thought ‘oh my word this boy is special’ was actually Al Hassan Toure.
“I remember that season, the Australia Cup run. This was a player that was bamboozling defenders because it felt to a certain extent he didn’t quite know what he wanted to do. Therefore the opposition had no clue as to what he was going to be doing.
“Unfortunately, for one reason or another, he hasn’t quite those heights. He might be a chance to get back there.
“I think Daniel Arzani is probably the one for me, seeing him come through just the glimpses of talent the way that he can shift the ball from one side of his body to another.”
While Garb went down memory lane, rattling off a couple of names from the NSL era – including Perth Glory duo Ivan Ergic and Ljubo Milicevic – but believes there was name that stood out among the rest.
“Mark Viduka is the one that stands out head and shoulders above the rest of me,” Garb said.
“When he came through for Melbourne Knights in the NSL, we hadn’t seen an Australian footballer like him. We had seen lots of big talents, but not in that position, not a striker who can come in at 18 years of age and hold the ball up, turn defenders and bump them off the ball and score at the rate in which he did.
“We like to apply caution to the way we hype up youngsters for good reason. There was none of that with Viduka. It was so blatantly obvious that he was set for the very top regardless of what was going on in his head at that stage because he was just so freakish.”
