When then-Leganes manager Borja Jimenez first heard about Yan Diomande, he was told they had found the next Lionel Messi.Jimenez, who coached the Spanish club from 2023 to 2025, had heard that kind of thing before.Club presidents often tell managers they have discovered a special talent, show them a few videos and wait for their reaction. That was the case in this instance, with Jimenez and former Leganes chief Jeff Luhnow.But most young hopefuls never make it to the professional ranks, and if they do, they don’t come remotely close to emulating Messi, so Jimenez did not pay too much attention.Then Diomande arrived.On August 6, Real Madrid signed Diomande from Bundesliga club RB Leipzig in a deal worth up to a club-record €140million (£120.2m; $189.3m) including add-ons. They saw off competition from Paris Saint-Germain and Liverpool to do so.Yet just a year earlier, none of those clubs had noticed how the young winger had begun to shine in La Liga’s lower reaches with Leganes, a small club to the south of Madrid, after being promoted from the team’s reserve side in Spain’s fifth tier. It has been a truly remarkable rise.Diomande joined Leganes in January 2025 as a free agent. He had previously been part of DME Academy in the United States, an “elite sports academy and educational institution” in Daytona Beach, Florida.He was just 18, did not speak Spanish and had never played professionally.Diomande was quickly promoted to Leganes’ first team after making his debut in Spain’s fifth tier (Rafa Babot/Getty Images)He had offers from MLS clubs. He also had trials at Bournemouth, Crystal Palace, Chelsea and Rangers, according to Txema Indias, who was Leganes’ sporting director at the time.Indias liked what he saw, and Diomande joined Leganes’ reserve team, but injury and an issue with his paperwork meant he did not make an appearance until March 16 that year, coming off the bench in the 69th minute of a 1-0 home defeat by Cala Pozuelo.The story was just getting started.The following week, Diomande played the second half of a 3-0 win at Rayo Vallecano B. Coaching staff had seen enough — they quickly realised the winger had to be promoted.Six days later, on March 29, he made his La Liga debut for the first team — at the Santiago Bernabeu, in a 3-2 defeat by Real Madrid that finished at around 10pm.It sounds like an incredible situation to be in. Jimenez says Diomande was totally unfazed.