Peñarol youth coach Adrián Colombo has been discussing the qualities of Manchester United’s 19-year-old Uruguayan winger Facundo Pellistri for about 10 minutes when he comes onto the defining traits of his nation’s football.
“It’s true we have a lot of players who get stuck in,” he tells i, “who fight for the ball, who will jump [for headers] or block.
“But we also have this other kind of player, who is quick, who carries the ball at speed. Uruguayan football is very vertical; you attack quickly. That is the case with Pellistri. Conducting the ball at speed is his primary weapon. He has a little bit of rebelliousness [about his play].”
Colombo would know. Before Pellistri was fast-tracked into the Peñarol first team in 2019, Colombo spent two years coaching him for the club’s U17 side. He describes a dedicated, mild mannered, respectful young man, but one who only has one thing on his mind when he is on a football pitch.
“The main thing with Facu is that he likes having the ball at his feet to run,” Colombo says. “He wants to get the ball at his feet and provoke one-on-one duels.”
It is, according to Jorge Viotti, the director of youth teams at River Plate de Montevideo, the club Pellistri played for from the age of eight until he moved to Peñarol, a quality he has always had. “As a child, he destabilised the opposition and was very intelligent,” Viotti says.
Those rare traits – which led Boca Juniors legend Juan Roman Riquelme to describe Pellistri as “sinvergüenza”, literally “shameless”, but perhaps better read here as impudent or audacious – are the reason that Pellistri was so in demand.
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer fought off serious interest from Lyon to take Pellistri to Manchester in the summer on the advice of ex-United player Diego Forlan, who was head coach at Peñarol until September this year. Forlan insisted both to Solskjaer and Pellistri that player and club would be a perfect match and given the characteristics Colombo describes and United’s long tradition of incisive wing play, his faith appears well placed.
Yet despite Pellistri’s dexterity, inventive passing, and desire to beat his man – all unmistakeable characteristics of Rioplatense street footballers – he is not a boy from the barrios. As Pablo Gama, a Uruguayan football journalist who has followed Pellistri’s rise at close quarters, tells i: “There is not the backstory of poverty that is common with footballers. He went to private school and studied English long before the possibility of Manchester United came up.”
According to Colombo, that upbringing and stable family environment will aid the 19-year-old as he settles in Europe. “I don’t have the slightest doubt that he [will cope with the pressures of the move]”, says his former coach, “Despite his age, he is mature and intelligent. We must not forget that he was playing for Peñarol at 17 and here at Peñarol the pressure is permanent. The need to win is permanent.”
That experience should come in useful as Pellistri heads on loan to Alaves. The Basque club are struggling in La Liga, having scored just 18 goals in their 20 games this season. But that is where Pellistri’s skills could help.
— Deportivo Alavés (@Alaves) January 31, 2021
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The fundamental element of his game is creation. Thanks to Colombo, who insisted that Pellistri learn to play on the left as well as the right whilst still in the youth team, Alaves will have the option of using that inventive spark on either side of the pitch.
If he is deployed on the right, Pellistri has the option of going outside his man and crossing or drifting in to play angled balls behind the defence. On the left, he can cut inside his marker and shoot on his stronger right foot.
Being so young, there is still plenty of room for improvement – as Solskjaer himself said, Pellistri is “more one for the future than now” which could explain why he will spend the second half of this season away from Old Trafford.
“He’s had a few games in the reserves,” Solskjaer said when discussing Pellistri’s possible loan last week. “We want him to have regular football, at a high level of course.”
Colombo brings up Pellistri’s decision making as obvious area to work on. “It doesn’t matter how many opponents are ahead of him, he starts to dribble,” his ex-coach says, “Sometimes I’d say, ‘Facu, it’s better to lay it off then attack the space.’ He needs to understand the game; when he can go past his man and when he needs to pass.”
His physique and finishing are also highlighted as areas that need work by journalist Gama and River Plate director Viotti. Viotti says there have been “a lot of assists but few goals”, an observation born out by the numbers. In his 34 games for Peñarol, Pellistri scored just three but laid on 12 goals for teammates.
And Gama points to the decisive match in last year’s Uruguayan top flight, a derby between Peñarol and Nacional, when Pellistri was up against a particularly bruising right-back in Armando Mendez, who was able to bully the youngster off the ball.
With time and the right direction, though, those improvements should come. “He’s a signing in the tradition of what we do here,” Solskjaer said when Pellistri signed, “which is to bring young players in and let them grow and develop.”
And if his mentors are correct, Pellistri will be well on his way to becoming a player that will get United fans on their feet when he returns next season.
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