The 2026 World Cup might be the final curtain call for some of the game’s greats, but it will also be remembered for a tournament where generational talents took their first steps on the world stage.
Some would have heard of Yan Diomande before they saw him play a full match. Paris Saint-Germain and Liverpool have been frequently mentioned as suitors alongside nine-figure transfer fees, with news Sunday that he’s leaning towards PSG. All the while, in his own understated way, as the hype grows, Diomande, 19, just goes about his business, ruining defenders and thrilling those watching.
He has been one of the breakout stars of the past season, but he only played top-flight football for the first time 15 months ago. One of his close friends and former roommates James Eliuda at the private sports training and educational institution DME Academy in Daytona Beach has been fully aware for a while of the man they call “Dio.”
Diomande was one of several African soccer players who had been recommended to the DME Academy and opted to take spots in their program. “We got sent a video of him from the under-17 AFCON and the minute you watched it, you thought, ‘Oh well, this is going to be fun,'” Todd Eason, director of soccer at DME from 2021 to 20224, tells ESPN.
Diomande arrived at DME in mid-September in 2022 from his home in the Ivory Coast. Eliuda had already been there a week by the time Diomande arrived. He met his roommate at reception, helped him with his bags up the steps and showed him to their room.
There was a language barrier to navigate. Diomande spoke French; Eliuda spoke Arabic. “I could understand English but didn’t have the confidence to talk it. He could understand a couple of words, but that was it. So we used very basic sign language. Like miming if you wanted to eat, or ‘how are you?’ Thumbs-up and things like that. Obviously, football. When we got into the room, he mimed that he wanted me to take a photo of him. He later explained that it was to let his mum he’d arrived OK.”
After the photo, some students from Puerto Rico knocked on the door and asked if they were up for kicking a ball about. Eliuda thought Diomande would prefer just to sleep, but he was adamant they go and play.
“I thought he’d be tired after his long flight, but then he picked up the ball,” Eliuda says. “He was doing things different to anything I’d ever seen. He started juggling the ball on his shoulders, he was doing crazy stuff already.”
The two learned English from language app Duolingo, and at school alongside their football sessions. Eliuda is a central midfielder, so he had Diomande running up and down the wings next to him. Training boiled over. “He’d get mad in training sometimes, we got tired, and you’d end up kicking each other a little bit. He’d get mad, so he’d get the ball off the goalkeeper and just start dribbling around everyone. You try to be aggressive to get it back, but he’s quicker and stronger than me.”
Eason had a translator with him, but Diomande soon took over the duties, translating Eason’s advice in training into French for the two Senegalese players. “That’s when I realized how intelligent he was as language wasn’t needed for his understanding of the game,” Eason says.
“He was a nervous lad though at the start, and struggled sometimes to control his emotions. He was always concerned about his mum and home, and he took time to adapt to the culture here.” Diomande struggled with the different food, and also differences in manners and customs. “He did make a family at DME though with his friends.”
Eason remembers Diomande’s loyalty. “The Senegalese lads picked on James a little bit, so in a training session, Dio went after the two of them to shut them up. He was so protective of his friends and people he’s loyal to. He thought James was being treated unfairly, so he thought ‘I’m going to take care of this.’ He went into a tackle, took one of them out, and after that they knew that Dio was in control.”
The team from DME played against other academies and club teams. Their first match together didn’t go to plan.
“We played another academy, and he elbowed a kid. It was a set piece, and this guy was kicking his ankles, stepping on his heel, so Dio just hit him,” Eason says. “I was like, ‘What just happened?!’ Dio got a red card. Afterward, he apologized to the team, he wasn’t yet quite acclimated. In the next couple of matches, he’d go down after a slight touch. I told him that wasn’t on. So then he took the kicks, adapted and moved on. He’s so quick to learn.”
But Diomande soon found his stride. “I couldn’t challenge them. Every time I put him in the game, I thought ‘this is far too easy for him,'” Eason says. In February, MLS clubs came to Florida for preseason. Eason knew Eric Boucher at Colorado Rapids, and he trained with their second team. That was too easy. So he went up to train with their senior team in Orlando. They had to sort it with his school, but they made it work.
“I got a call from one of the coaches saying, Dio had just made our senior captain Keegan Rosenberry look foolish. We had to do something about it. Whatever level you threw him into, he rose to it. I just couldn’t find any competition that would humble him. And that’s where I put in a call to a team down in Orlando.”
Eason pointed them toward affiliate local United Premier Soccer League side Frenzi. “We have a connection with DME through our owner, so we offer some of their players semi-professional football,” Tyler Weston, then coach of Frenzi and now head soccer coach of Liverpool International Academy Maryland, tells ESPN.
“We’ve had a Puerto Rican international here, and other decent players like James and Dio. I remember the call from Todd, he said, ‘Hey we have a kid from the Ivory Coast who could be good, I think this would help develop his mindset.’ Then we saw him play and wow, I thought ‘Hey, we have, we have something really special here.’ Dio was thrown into the mix and stood out right from the beginning.”
The question was where to play him. Weston favoured a 3-5-2 at the time. “I played a sort of heavy left side, with three at the back, and I made a controversial call early on. I picked him at wingback. He’d never played there, but when I asked him he said: ‘Coach, wherever you need me to play, like, I, I can do it.’ He had such a calm demeanor.
“I know it sounds crazy now that he was at wingback, but his engine was just unbelievable. He completely bought into our team ethos that our success is defined by the opportunities we give to these players.”
MLS teams were taking notice. Eason and Diomande’s agent had received calls from “five to 10 MLS teams” wanting to know more. “Dio knew about that, but never once did he say or even hint ‘I’m too good to be here.’ When we were in hotels for away games, the dude would be up at 6 a.m., juggling in the parking lot and doing different sorts of stuff to get his body and mindset ready. It wasn’t always easy for him. The league had former MLS players in it, so they knew how to defend him, frustrate him. But he was composed: if a couple of reps weren’t successful, he’d reset himself.”
In 2023, Weston felt he had a squad capable of winning the UPSL. He namechecks Adrian Biaggi, a Puerto Rico international now at University of Central Illinois, Charles Ahl, at the Pittsburgh Riverhounds and Aidan Godinho, who was drafted to Montreal Impact at the start of the year. But the star act was Diomande.
As the season developed at Frenzi, interest grew in Diomande from MLS sides. He had a couple of trials midseason, “but nothing got in the way of Frenzi,” Weston says. “I spent the whole season wondering when we’d have to say goodbye to him. I was preparing for the conversation where you say, ‘Hey, you know, this might be the time where you have to jump into a new environment. We love you, but this is the right opportunity.’ But he was adamant he wanted to finish the season and win the championship.”
He was there with his friends, playing in the same team as Eliuda and Ghanian striker Charles Christian. “I remember this match against Legacy, a team from Gainesville. It went to extra time. Players were flagging, but not Dio. In the 118th minute, he was still sprinting up and down the wing. It was genuinely astonishing.”
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Klinsmann: Ivory Coast’s Yan Diomande a ‘very special player’
Frenzi reached the final of the UPSL and played Sporting Wichita. Diomande scored their opener, but the game went to extra time. A match report read how in the 115th minute “Diomande exhibited remarkable precision and composure, elegantly curling the ball into the bottom right corner of the net.” It secured Diomande the golden boot and Frenzi their first UPSL title.
“You knew he was way past MLS and was already one of the greatest players ever in the history of the UPSL,” Weston says. “He just made you go ‘wow.'”
Diomande was attracting interest from overseas. He trained at Chelsea, Crystal Palace, Bournemouth and Rangers. “I was young so I didn’t really know what was going on, but it was fun seeing players like [Michael] Olise and [Eberechi] Eze,” Diomande told reporters in May. He also trained with Colorado Rapids and Charlotte FC but didn’t want to start his career in the MLS. Eventually, it was Leganes who tempted him to La Liga, signing for them in late 2024, and joining them in January 2025.
“A lot of people don’t really know this story, but the owner of Leganes runs an investment group in Houston called Blue Crow, and I think he’s just bought Cascade, a USL club. But he was also funding the African group that was partnered with me that was identifying all these players. I think he fell out with his African partner, and so he took Dio and another player to Leganes.”
Diomande made his debut for Leganes against Real Madrid on March 29, 2025, and scored his first goal against Espanyol on May 11. He’d played 542 minutes in La Liga and that was enough for RB Leipzig who that summer activated his €20 million minimum fee release clause and took him to the Bundesliga. A year on and he had played in the African Cup of Nations and been crowned the league’s Rookie of the Season after a campaign which saw him score 13 goals and register 10 assists for Leipzig. And now Liverpool — his father’s team — and PSG are knocking on the door.
“I remember watching him play Olise at Bayern, and Olise got the better of him. I thought, ‘Finally, Dio’s met his match,'” Eason says. “Then he played him again and he was outstanding. He’s got this ability to adapt and his understanding, intelligence of the game along with his physical attributes and technical ability, well, he’s just a player that I just don’t think has hit his ceiling.”
Whatever decision he makes on next season — whether to take the leap to one of Europe’s elite clubs or remain at RB Leipzig — he will put his development and his family first. Ever since he arrived in Florida for the first time back in September 2022 and immediately sent a photo back to his mum, it has been about family. “He loves his family so much,” Eliuda says. “His sister, Roxane, meant so much to him, too but she passed away. He really loves his family, and he always talks to them, always wants to be around him.
“Being around him does inspire you. You’re inspired by how he plays, and how he conducts himself. You’re just not going to doubt him, are you? You know he’s going to show up.”
On Tuesday, Ivory Coast play Norway. Diomande will be there on the left wing. The cameras will be on him and Erling Haaland. But Diomande will be locked in.
Watching his every step, flick and dart, there will be a small pocket of people dotted up and down the U.S. who will smile knowing they played alongside the man they called Dio. “He’s so disciplined, and always makes the right choice based on the best environment for him to develop. I represented my national team under-15, U17s and U20s, and I’ve never seen anything like Dio,” Eliuda says.
“He’s the best person I ever played with, and I got to watch him play with my own eyes.”
