Yan Diomande: Leganes ‘new Messi’ who went from injury return to Bernabeu stage in three days

Yan Diomande’s route to becoming one of the most coveted young players in Europe began not with a long-term plan, but with a whirlwind three-day spell that took him from Leganes’ reserves to the pitch at the Santiago Bernabeu.

Before talk of €100m fees and headline moves, the Ivorian was a little-known teenager just back from injury and featuring for Leganes’ B team. Within 72 hours of a standout performance in a training match, he had forced his way into the first-team picture and made his La Liga debut away to Real Madrid.

The coach who fast-tracked him, former Leganes boss and current Al Ahli (Qatar) manager Borja Jimenez, has detailed how those few days changed the player’s future and confirmed his belief that Diomande’s talent was “exceptional from the very first touch”.

‘We have the new Messi’

Jimenez recalls first hearing about Diomande when Leganes owner Jeff Luhnow sent him a home-made YouTube clip of a 16-year-old attacking midfielder training in one of the club’s partner academies in the United States.

“I first heard about Yan when Jeff Luhnow, the Leganes owner, showed me a home video of him on YouTube,” Jimenez told Spanish newspaper Marca. “He was about 16 and studying at one of the club’s academies in the United States.

“Jeff said to me: ‘We have the new Messi.’ And what I saw in that video was genuinely amazing.”

That initial impression was reinforced the first time Jimenez saw Diomande live, in a friendly on the Butarque pitch between the first team and the reserves, held just a week before Leganes’ league trip to Real Madrid on 29 March 2025.

A few touches that changed everything

Diomande had only played a few minutes for the B team the previous week and Jimenez had never watched him in person. That changed quickly.

“In his first action he beat his marker with ease, then did it again the next time,” Jimenez said. “After that he played a brilliant through ball with an incredible first touch, then later controlled the ball in the box, set himself and fired it into the top corner.

“After just five or six moments like that, I called the B-team coach and told him: ‘Take Yan off the pitch, because he’s going to get kicked in the next action. Get him off immediately and have him train with us tomorrow.’”

The Spaniard insists that decision was not an overreaction, but a protective measure.

“He played only 45 minutes because he was coming back from injury and he was far superior to the other players,” Jimenez explained. “That can create tension in matches. I anticipated a heavy challenge on him, so we preferred to substitute him.”

Lesson in the dressing room hierarchy

Once Diomande stepped up to first-team training, Jimenez’s first conversation with him was not about tactics or positioning, but behaviour.

“I didn’t talk to him about football, but about how to conduct himself in the first team,” he said. “I asked him to keep performing at the same level, but to respect the hierarchy in the dressing room.

“I told him: ‘You must arrive first and leave last, help your team-mates and understand that you are the new player.’ I wanted him to grasp the rules of professionalism before anything else.”

According to Jimenez, the message landed immediately.

“I wanted to be a guide for him in his first steps towards professionalism, and he understood everything I said perfectly.”

At the end of Diomande’s first full session with the senior squad, the impact on the rest of the players was already clear.

“We were walking towards the dressing room when Dani Raba came up to me and said: ‘This kid is fantastic.’ I answered: ‘Yes, he really is fantastic.’”

Bernabeu debut and fearlessness

After impressing in training, the technical staff had little hesitation in including Diomande in the squad to face Real Madrid.

“We went to the Bernabeu needing a positive result, and we brought him on around the 80th minute,” Jimenez said. “From the start we were convinced he was a different kind of player.”

His first involvement underlined that belief.

“His first touch was a wonderful change of rhythm inside the penalty area,” Jimenez continued. “Then he was on the end of a challenge that led to calls for a penalty that wasn’t given. From that moment, his career began to take shape naturally.”

What struck Jimenez most that night was not only Diomande’s technique, but his temperament.

“He didn’t show any fear, even though it was his first game at the Santiago Bernabeu, a stadium that unsettles many young players,” he said.

‘He could have changed our season’

Looking back, Jimenez is convinced Leganes’ campaign might have unfolded very differently had Diomande joined the first team sooner.

“If we’d had him since January, maybe we’d have been fighting for European places instead of battling against relegation,” he said. “But he was only with us for a month and a half.”

Even in that short spell, Jimenez felt Diomande’s influence was decisive.

“He was a decisive player, he scored goals and changed the course of several matches,” he said. “Even against Sevilla, despite missing a clear chance, his impact was very obvious.”

From €20m gamble to €100m asset

Interest from abroad arrived quickly. Jimenez says several foreign clubs contacted him when Diomande’s valuation was around €20m – the fee RB Leipzig eventually paid to sign him.

“Some of them told me that €20m was a lot of money,” he recalled. “I replied that his value would multiply two or three times in one or two years.”

The market moved even faster than that prediction. Within a single season of his €20m move to RB Leipzig, Diomande’s price has soared, and he is now close to leaving in a deal expected to be worth between €100m and €120m.

For Jimenez, it is confirmation that the teenager he once watched on a grainy YouTube clip and then protected in a friendly at Butarque has become one of the standout emerging talents in European football.