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ARLINGTON, TX — Yan Diomande is not like other teenagers.That's safe to say. First of all, he's not on Instagram or TikTok any more.Well, OK, he posted on both three days ago.But that was before everything went crazy. Before the Ivory Coast national team, for which he started all three World Cup group matches, started preparing for the knockout stage.It was before the reports came out that he may be headed to back-to-back UEFA Champions League winner Paris Saint-Germain, heading to France rather than joining 2024-25 Premier League champion Liverpool. That's if he leaves current club, Bundesliga competitor RB Leipzig."My dream is playing for my country and making history with my country. I don’t have Instagram any more. I don’t have TikTok, so I can’t see anything," he said. "I have an agent who is going to manage the rest. For me, the most important thing right now is to be focused on the World Cup."Most 19-year-olds also are not representing their country at the World Cup, where Diomande will help lead the Ivory Coast attack against Norway in Tuesday's round of 32 match after earning Man of the Match honors in his World Cup debut for creating five chances in a 1-0 win over Ecuador.What is Yan Diomande's Florida connection?Then again, he's not like most wunderkinds, who often get to a top European club as quickly as they can and bake in a team's oven, soaking up tactical, nutritional and professional lessons before emerging as the finished product with the first team.Convinced he couldn't get an opportunity in Africa, his family sent him to the sports-focused boarding DME Academy. Going to North Florida wasn't the easiest first step for Diomande, but he said it taught him how to be independent."I didn’t really, really enjoy it and didn’t really appreciate it because I was young and didn’t see the (importance) of being here," he said at a news conference Monday. "But that was a great experience to leave my family to come really far away. That was a great experience, and I think right now I can live alone forever, I can go anywhere alone."(He did not, as some online reports indicate, play at Yulee High School, where a a bemused coach told USA TODAY Sports this week that he would've remembered a U-17 Ivorian international boosting the program that did make a run to the 2023 semifinals.)Even after his time in Florida, where he dominated on the field with the DME squad and with UPSL team AS Frenzi, he couldn't latch on with a team. Some MLS teams had interest, and he had trials at European clubs like Rangers, Olympiacos and Crystal Palace. But he was back in the Ivory Coast thinking the dream was over when he got an opportunity from Spanish club Leganés.The impact Diomande's late sister Roxane has had on his lifeThat is where everything changed.Diomande got the break he had always wanted. He also got the news that, as he wrote he "can’t speak about," a call from the Ivory Coast telling him his sister had been killed at just 15 years old, allegedly because of a spiked drink."I can’t forget Leganes. That was my first professional club. I remember the first goal I scored against Espanyol after losing my sister," he said Monday, June 29. "I scored after losing my sister that was great for me. I’m grateful to be there for four or five months I think. The only thing I can say is thank you. Thank you for the opportunity."That was just one year ago, and his letter on The Players' Tribune, titled "Dear Roxane," provided a raw look into how the young man is processing unimaginable pain.Despite the difficulties, Diomande hasn't let himself become cynical, even as he wrote, "I don’t feel anything. It’s like I’m not even human. Since you died, I’m just blank."He is dedicating his World Cup and his career to his sister's memory, trying to move forward and achieve the career she believed he would.That attitude comes through on the training ground, with the Ivory Coast preparing for a round of 32 match against Norway in which Diomande is expected to be the key attacking outlet against a Norway team that also deploys one of the world's best attackers."Yan is an easy player to coach because he’s always smiling, always in a good mood. He brings a lot of joy off the field," Ivory Coast manager Emerse Faé said Monday. "I think everyone knows his qualities on the field. He’s a player always in rhythm, always pushing."He’s a player who, while he’s attacking doesn’t hesitate to do the defensive work with his teammates. He’s a really pleasant player to coach because of what he brings on the field as well as off the field to the group."In a cut-throat industry like soccer, it is the on-field product that may matter most. Diomande is not yet the finished product, still struggling to cross the ball once he shakes his defender on the wing and sometimes hesitating to shoot when more seasoned players would let rip and be off the celebrate.Still, the fact that he has risen so quickly from Daytona Beach to trial frustration, through personal difficulties and is now reportedly the target of transfer moves eclipsing $110 million speaks to the player he is on the field and the young man he is off it.For now, he insists the focus is entirely on what he can provide to Les Elephants, taking a World Cup stage he simply couldn't have dreamed of when he was watching the last World Cup in Florida."These are the matches that motivate you without even talking about it. The players they have, players of quality, and we have too a team with quality players," Diomande said. "We want to win the match (Tuesday), and that's what we're going to try to do."It's a mature answer for a teenager who is not like other teenagers. Not at all.
