A young Gambian player Sulayman Jallow, 17, from Tallinding is making waves in Italy. Jallow was scouted during the Sportlex trial in early 2023 and left for Italy in the summer. While in Italy, he was studying and also training with Rimini a Serie C team. He made his debut with the first team recently and he is still going to school.
Local sports paper quotidiano.net picks up the rest of Jallow’s story in Ital.
Sulayman Jallow is 17 years old, the striker that the Rimini FC (the red and whites) signed after a long bureaucratic process.
Rimini already knows it well, just like his new teammates, because Sulayman Jallow has been going to school in Romagna and playing football since last year.
A long process has accompanied him up to the day of his membership of the first team, last week. This is because he is 17 years old and came to Italy from his native Gambia with a dream as happens to many.
In Rimini they got to know him, they studied him and in that boy who came from so far away they saw something interesting. “He came for a few days of trial – says the technical director of the red and whites Antonio Di Battista – and we certainly immediately saw potential in him”. But to get to the membership the process is long, very long. “The law for non-EU citizens – he explains – says that you cannot be registered if you have not first attended at least one year of school in Italy. Only in this way could he be equated to EU citizens”.
So, Jallow starts attending school and dreams of football. All in all, a school season passes quickly. Until the day when he wears the red and white jersey not only in training. Buscè calls him up for the Gubbio match. He stays on the bench, but for the moment it doesn’t matter. Right away, the football of the ‘big boys’ for the striker that Rimini has been waiting for for months and months. “It would have been useless to insert him in a context in which he would have had less chance of growth – explains Di Battista – Better to let him mature in the first team. Physically he is a player who doesn’t suffer too much from the impact with the ‘big boys’. And not even from the point of view of cunning”. Professional striker. “Good in depth – explains the technical director – He is probably more of a central striker, but he can also play outside. But there is no doubt about one thing: he sees the goal. When he kicks he does it ‘like a big boy’. Clearly he needs to improve from a technical point of view. We are curious to see him in action”. The young Jallow has been in Buscè’s mechanisms for months now. Because with captain Colombi and his teammates he has done the preparation and then continued the training. A long wait, but one that has already taught something on the field to that young striker that now even the Rimini fans are curious to meet. Maybe already on Sunday, at lunchtime, against Torres.
