All hail Alejandro Garnacho: SIUUU-ing like Ronaldo but scoring like Bale

Despite only being 17 years old, Manchester United prospect Alejandro Garnacho already has a back catalogue of goals that most players can only dream of. 

Garnacho initially came through the academy at Spanish side Atletico Madrid, who are renowned for producing and developing world-class forwards.

While playing for Atletico’s Infantil B, he displayed his natural goalscoring instincts and became Spain’s top scorer at that level in 2016. 

The winger, who wears the No.7 and grew up idolizing Cristiano Ronaldo, continued to take the youth league by storm and made his Under-19 debut at the age of 15 during the 2019-20 season.

According to Spanish outlet Marca, he was regarded as the jewel of their academy and Atleti were said to have done everything within their powers to persuade him to stay at the club.

But his impressive performances at the youth level unsurprisingly caught the attention of Europe’s biggest clubs. United fended off interest from Real Madrid and Borussia Dortmund as the lure of treading the same path as Ronaldo seemingly made the difference for Garnacho.

United paid a £419,000 compensation fee to secure his signature in 2020, and he was the third La Liga starlet to join the club that summer after Marc Jurado and Alvaro Fernandez.

Garnacho enjoyed a promising debut season with United’s Under-18s, registering seven goals and a further four assists in 18 appearances, including a hat-trick against Stoke City.

A first #mufc hat-trick for Alejandro Garnacho, with three assists from Charlie McNeill pic.twitter.com/DoqqQoXPgm

— utdreport Academy (@utdreportAcad) April 10, 2021

But he needed time to adapt to English football and was often overshadowed by fellow forwards Charlie McNeill and Joe Hugill, who arrived