Leeds brought forward Wilfried Gnonto’s arrival – how soon will the gamble pay off? - The Athletic 8/9/22

By Phil Hay, James Horncastle and more

Confirmation that Wilfried Gnonto had signed for Leeds United reached him via a FaceTime call. He was in Zurich as his transfer went through and was given the good news by video, in lieu of any signing photos or the usual in-person etiquette.

By the following afternoon, more than 12 hours after the transfer deadline, he was at Leeds’ training ground for a chat with Jesse Marsch, but Gnonto signing remotely late on Thursday told a story about the last day of the window and the change of plan it provoked at Elland Road.

He knew he was destined to join Leeds because, a few weeks earlier, the Premier League club had struck a deal for him with the side he was leaving, FC Zurich. The only caveat was that the 18-year-old would come to England in January and when he passed his medical, carried out by Leeds’ medical staff in Switzerland last month, he did not expect to move immediately. But deadline day grew complicated at Elland Road as Leeds made overtures to Cody Gakpo and Bamba Dieng but drew a blank.

A few hours before the 11pm cut-off, attention turned back to Gnonto. He was, essentially, a striker who Leeds had signed and could bring over without the need for scrambled flights or hasty medical checks.

All that was required was Zurich’s cooperation and a slightly higher fee to compensate for his sudden departure. To Gnonto’s surprise, the window closed with him stepping into the Premier League.

On paper, he has plenty going for him: years of development in Inter Milan’s academy, exposure to first-team football in Switzerland, still a teenager and, as of June, the youngest goalscorer in the history of Italy’s national team.

But three weeks ago, when links to Gnonto first arose, Marsch was asked if he thought the forward was “Premier League ready” and said no. He would be in time, or so Leeds believed, but at that stage, their hunt for a new attacking player was focused on more proven names: Gakpo, Dieng, Hwang Hee-chan. In the absence of other deals, Gnonto made sure they exited the window with at least something.

Leeds’ initial idea was to let him develop a little longer in Switzerland, where he had found his feet and was growing as a player. It had been his decision to depart for Zurich from Inter in 2020, turning down a professional deal in Italy after almost a decade in Milan, and the move worked.

At Inter, he developed doubts about whether he had a serious chance of pushing into their first-team squad. “I didn’t leave Inter for the money,” he told Sportweek. “I did it because it was the right thing to play first-team football.”

The Swiss Super League was some way off Europe’s most beaten track, but he was promised games by Zurich and got them: plenty off the bench but enough for him to feel that his game was developing and people were paying attention to him. That he was being noticed became clear in May of this year, when Roberto Mancini called him up to the Italy squad. His professional league starts were barely into double figures.

The question for Leeds and Marsch, though, is how much of an impact Gnonto can make in England, and how quickly. Marsch has other players who will play ahead of Gnonto, but the American will want to learn quickly whether he is more Premier League ready than he thought or capable of changing games like he did for Zurich.

Gnonto scored nine league goals in Switzerland last season in a campaign when 24 of his appearances came off the bench. Zurich, who won the Swiss title, were able to use his pace and dribbling ability to good effect, in support of their most dependable goalscorers Assan Ceesay and Antonio Marchesano.

He will be given time by Leeds and it might be that he needs it, however the season goes. It might also be that Marsch needs him. “If he develops in peace,” Mancini said, “and without too much pressure, he can show his important qualities.”

Gnonto’s roots lie in the Ivory Coast, the son of a father who came to Italy 30 years ago and worked in bathroom fittings and textiles. His mother, Chantal, arrived in Europe after marrying his father Boris and waited on tables in the Grand Hotel Dino in Baveno, a village in northern Italy where Gnonto grew up.

It was tips from the hotel the family used to pay for the petrol needed to take him to a trial with Inter in 2012. Gnonto played in a football academy in Novara, which was affiliated with Inter Milan, and the trial was his break.

He was quoted in Corriere della Sera as saying he got a “strange feeling” whenever he thought back to that car journey. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of on my mum’s part or my own,” he said. “It’s just that as a kid you don’t realise what your parents are doing for you. I understand now.”

Gnonto had a gift for football but an academic brain, too. He chose a classical-based education in Italy, attending a classical lyceum and studying Latin and Greek before switching to a more sports and scientific-based curriculum in his mid-teens.

He can speak English, French and German and he liked reading biographies about elite athletes like Lionel Messi and Michael Jordan. He would take his books on Italy Under-19 duty and would study them if he got the time.

Gnonto’s height, 5ft 5in (165cm), tallies with the strengths that scouts see in him. He is rapid and fairly explosive with his running, a powerful sprinter with a low centre of gravity, and any amount of analysis finds that he likes to go at defenders with the ball at his feet.

The picture that emerges of him is that of a creative forward rather than a poacher or a penalty-box striker. Smarterscout’s data, shown below and adjusted to Premier League standard to give a fair comparison between Switzerland and England’s top flight, shows the high quality of the chances he creates and also the extent to which he likes to take up possession and dribble with it.

Alongside that, there are defensive tells that should give Marsch what he looks for from his players in and out of possession.

While Gnonto’s defending intensity does not score highly, he is good at disrupting opposition moves and his recovery and interception numbers are relatively impressive. It suggests that even if he needs time to develop into a forward Marsch can feel confident in fielding, he has the right strengths to build on.

Gnonto has shown he can cope with different positions up front, something Leeds appeared to be seeking in all the forwards they talked about signing this summer.

At Zurich last season, the team was set up more often than not with three at the back and two up front. They would switch between a five-man midfield and a system that placed a holding player in front of the defence, only occasionally slipping into a 3-4-3.

Gnonto featured almost exclusively in one of the positions up front, though his preferred role is that of a secondary forward rather than the lead striker. Not all data companies cover the Swiss League closely, but StatsBomb analyses the competition in detail and Leeds are known to use the firm’s package of stats.

Zurich rated Gnonto highly and, at the start of the window, placed a healthy valuation on his head. They wanted in excess of €10million (£8.7m; $9.9m), a fee that put off certain clubs, including Feyenoord.

His contract was up in 2023 and while his age would have entitled Zurich to compensation, various suitors realised there was no need to pay that asking price. Zurich, in the end, were happy to take what Leeds were offering when the request was made for Gnonto’s move to be brought forward last week. The final fee is understood to have been in the region of £5million.

Internationally, Gnonto has learned a different formation, slotting into Mancini’s 4-3-3 as a wide forward. His debut against Germany in the Nations League in June yielded an assist inside five minutes of him appearing as a substitute, and he featured again against England and Hungary.

His fourth cap, away to Germany, brought his maiden international goal, a 78th-minute strike in a 5-2 defeat, taken from close range. Italy have been in a low mood since winning Euro 2020, knocked out of the World Cup during the qualification stages, but Gnonto was a cause of optimism, a flash of promise for a country that needed new attacking blood. Mancini was quoted as saying he knew “how to play football like few other players”.

Mancini felt comfortable taking risks on raw talent because of his own experiences, making his debut for Bologna in Serie A when he was 16 in 1981. He had no qualms about bringing through players with no Serie A background or top-level experience, like Nicolo Zaniolo, another ex-Inter trainee, who left for Roma in 2018 but made his international debut before even appearing for his club.

In any case, the national side were trying to move on from Ciro Immobile, a long-time servant with whom the supporters were losing patience. Gnonto was the mark of a head coach seeking a fresh start.

Gnonto’s only goal this season, scored against Linfield in the Europa League, gives an idea of the type of forward he is and how he likes to position himself when playing through the middle. Many of his runs involve hovering on the shoulder or timing bursts in behind the defence from deep, using his pace to give his team-mates a target.

This move at Linfield starts with Gnonto judging a short sprint nicely to give Zurich the chance to thread a pass through a gap. The opportunity to pick him out is rejected and there is palpable frustration in Gnonto’s reaction.

He resets himself quickly, though, and tries to repeat the trick, albeit from a position closer to his marker. He darts in behind for a second time and on this occasion, Zurich find him from the halfway line with a ball Linfield fail to intercept. Gnonto is clean through and finishes nicely with a shot off the outside of his right boot.

“He’s been able to mature well in Zurich,” says Fabian Ruch, a sports writer with Neue Zurcher Zeitung. “The coach, Andre Breitenreiter, built him up carefully. Being called up for Italy was an honour for Gnonto, especially because he played in little Switzerland.

“He’s made tremendous progress but he’s still a little wild, especially tactically sometimes. Last autumn he was substituted on and then substituted off in a game against Servette. The coach wasn’t happy with him. Gnonto hadn’t acted well tactically. After, he cried on the pitch even though Zurich won. It must have been a valuable lesson for him.”

Gnonto was asked before his move to Leeds whether another year in Zurich might do him good or whether he was in a hurry to move onto a bigger stage. “Better a team, whoever it is, that gives me time to develop, make mistakes and improve as a person and as a player,” he said, in no rush to break out.

As he saw it, there was little chance that had he remained at Inter he would have been playing for Italy by the age of 18. And when he appeared against England in the Nations League, he noted that England players of a similar age to him were regulars with major Premier League sides.

“It’s tougher in Italy for young players,” Gnonto said. “If you’re decent, you get to play in England and Germany. No one looks at your birth certificate. It’s a different mentality. They’re braver.”

Leeds have taken a gamble on him and while the prevailing view around Elland Road is that the club needed an attacking option with a more proven track record than Gnonto — a Gakpo, for example — that is neither his fault nor his problem. “He is still a boy,” Mancini said, and Leeds see him in that light, too, a talent for tomorrow that circumstances brought their way today.