Sportsmail visits Liverpool superstar Diaz's first clubs in Colombia

It is just after 7am at Cancha Bombona, the simple training ground of Barranquilla FC, but already a group of ambitious teenage footballers are hard at work. One young man, with No 28 on his shorts and a distinctive haircut, catches the eye.

As the temperature soars, he stays cool in possession and the calmness he has on the ball, with his left foot, is a welcome distraction to the constant roar and rumble of wagons on the adjacent highway.

His name is Jesus Diaz. He is 17 and comes from a gifted footballing family. He has two brothers. One is called Roller and he plays in Portugal's third division. The other also had a spell in Portugal but he has moved on to such an extent that, this weekend, he will try to win the Champions League with Liverpool.

And this is the reason Sportsmail is in this industrial city on Colombia's Caribbean coast. It was on these pitches — and with this proud club — that Luis Diaz, one of the stars of the Premier League season, began to hone the talent that, in time, may see him become one of the best in the world.

To say the people of Barranquilla are thrilled by what Diaz is doing is an understatement. The Coliseo Sport Bar in the middle of town hums when the Premier League is being broadcast and a Liverpool Supporters' Group has seen its membership balloon since he moved to Anfield in January.

Diaz, with his electric pace and trickery, has a skill-set that makes him stand out from the crowd and it quickly becomes apparent that's always been the case. He was born in Barrancas, a town 200 miles and a six-hour drive to the east of here, but football changed the direction of his life in January 2015.

'He came to try out,' Francisco Sanchez, an administrator at Barranquilla, explains. 

'There were