Francesco Camarda might just be the most talked-about 16-year-old in Italy after another season filled with first, and now AC Milan must carefully plan his future.
At 15 years, 8 months and 15 days, Camarda became the youngest ever to debut in Serie A last season and is fresh from winning the Under 17 European Championship in which he was voted best player of the tournament with four goals in five games.
While waiting for the 2024-25 season to get underway you should check out BC Game, but it already feels like it will be another crucial campaign in Milan’s project to help Camarda realise his full potential.
Childhood dream
There is certainly a romance to the story because Camarda is a Milanista and has been spotted in the Curva Sud before, but with this there is some pressure on Milan to manage his development the right way, perhaps with a promotion to the U23 team first.
As we reported first, Milan will take their place in Serie C with a new second team that aims to create a pool of 50-55 players that can move between the first team and the second team. The overall investment for the club is €12m, and a lot of the current Primavera stars will move up.
Thus, there is the potential for him to start facing fully-grown adults from next season should the club choose to put him in the U23 team, and that seems like the logical next step towards playing week-in week-out in front of fellow fans at San Siro.
Coach’s opinion
Camarda played at Afforese when he was even younger, a neighbourhood in Affori, a north-west suburb of Milan, next to Comasina where he was born and raised. Massimo D’Amaro, head of the Afforese football school, spoke about his developments and future hopes to La Gazzetta dello Sport.
“I’ve been training children for almost twenty years: doing the math, I’ll have seen fifteen hundred of them. Camarda is the strongest of all.
“With us it was only one season, but it was enough for us all to understand that he was different from the others. If I have to describe him with one word, I would use ‘inspiration’. He did what he wanted, he scored in any way.”
Can he become a champion?
“Yes. Francesco is made for football. In addition to his feet, he also has the right mindset. And I would immediately let him breathe the air of the first team: training and going on the bench there, rather than in the U23s, would be good for him. Yes. In the Primavera he plays three years under age, yet it makes the difference.”
In your opinion, will he make it?
“Yes. Football is his obsession. During the pandemic, at half past eight in the morning he was already in the courtyard kicking the ball against the wall alone. At ten years old he played on the playground against thirteen-year-olds.
“Five against five, we always won. The bigger ones looked at Francesco and had the look of someone who doesn’t understand how someone so much smaller had been able to not let him see the ball.”
