Every young player who arrives at Valdebebas walks past the same wall of photographs, and most of them learn to stop noticing. Yan Diomande has not stopped noticing. Real Madrid's teenage signing has spent his first weeks at the club looking up at pictures of Cristiano Ronaldo on his way into training, and when he was asked about it this week he did not bother playing it cool. “Cristiano Ronaldo is my idol,” he said. For a €140 million arrival with an entire fanbase waiting to see what it bought, it is a revealing place to start.
The Ivory Coast winger was speaking to Sporty TV, in an interview carried by Fabrizio Romano and reported by Madrid Universal, and the detail he chose to describe is the one every Madridista will recognise: not the trophies, but the way the man carried himself.
What Yan Diomande said about Cristiano Ronaldo
When I go to training, I look at his pictures. The pictures say everything. The walk, the aura. I'm proud to play in the club my idol played in.
Yan Diomande to Sporty TV, via Fabrizio Romano
It is worth sitting with that for a second, because it is not the usual new-signing boilerplate. Diomande did not pick out a goal or a final. He picked out the walk. Ronaldo's legacy at Real Madrid needs no introduction — the goals, the personality, the relentlessness, the habit of producing in the moments that decided things — and eight years on, the club is still measuring its attack against what he left behind.
Comparisons between the two would be absurd at this stage, and nobody sensible is making them. But if a 140-million-euro teenager is going to borrow something from the photographs on the wall, the mentality is the right thing to take.
The €140m context behind the quote
Real Madrid signed Diomande from RB Leipzig this summer for a fee reported at around €140 million, a number that says everything about the faith Los Blancos have in a winger who, by Madrid Universal's description, took the Bundesliga by storm last season. It is the sort of price tag that has flattened better-established players than him.
His response to it has been consistent from the first day. He has insisted throughout that the fee does not weigh on him, and he said much the same in the interview where he talked about Didier Drogba's advice and playing for José Mourinho. Whether that survives a bad night at a hostile away ground is the only real test, and it is not far away.
From the photographs to Saturday night
The waiting is nearly over. Diomande was registered with LaLiga earlier this month as Real Madrid filled all 25 of their squad places, and Bernabéu Digital confirm the season opens for Mourinho's side away at Espanyol on Saturday evening, kicking off at 21:30 Spanish time. Nobody outside the dressing room knows yet how much of that night belongs to the new winger.
What is already obvious is that he understands where he has landed. Plenty of signings say the right things about the badge; fewer of them notice that the building is trying to tell them something. Diomande arrived, looked at the wall, and worked out that the photographs were the brief.
Ronaldo's aura is not transferable, and no teenager should be asked to carry it. But if Yan Diomande wants a standard to chase at Real Madrid, he has picked the highest one in the corridor and told everybody about it. The football starts on Saturday.
