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#1 Diego Rossi
Age: 21 Club: Los Angeles FC Market Value: €8 million
Uruguay has received more than its fair share of striking talent in recent years. The likes of Diego Forlan, Luis Suarez and Edinson Cavani have all gone on to have stellar careers at the very highest level of the game, playing for the likes of Manchester United, Barcelona and Paris Saint-Germain, among others.
Diego Rossi hails from the Uruguayan capital of Montevideo, born there in March 1998. He was just five years old when he joined the youth club of Uruguay Solymar, staying there until he was 10, when he moved to Club Atletico Penarol, a club with a storied history. Nine of the Uruguayan squad that lifted the 1950 World Cup played for Penarol, and it remains the only club to have one of its players in the Uruguay squad for each of the country's World Cup appearances.
Rossi spent eight years in the youth academy before breaking into the first team at the age of 17, in January 2016. He made his first start for the club in April of that year, and between his debut and December 2017, he scored 13 goals in 46 games for the club.
At the end of the calendar year in 2017, Rossi was signed as a young designated player by LAFC, who were set to join the MLS and make their debut in the 2018 season. Just a day before his 20th birthday, Rossi made his LAFC debut, and scored 11 minutes into the club's first ever MLS match, against the Seattle Sounders. He would go on to play 33 times that year, scoring 12 goals, before taking his game one notch higher in 2019.
Whilst the headlines in Los Angeles have been mainly about LA Galaxy star Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Rossi's teammate Carlos Vela, who is having an outrageous campaign, the 21 year-old has quietly had an excellent season himself.
He has started 34 games so far, playing a total of 2992 minutes (only centre-back Eddie Segura has played more), and is the club's second highest goal scorer this term, with 17 goals, and their joint-second highest assist provider with eight. The only player to top him in both these aspects is Vela (36 goals and 11 assists respectively).
Rossi stands at juts 5 feet 7 inches, and is a slippery customer. His ability to slip between defenders and get into dangerous positions makes him extremely difficult to mark, and when he gets into striking positions, he is an assassin in front of goal. Deployed most often as a left winger in a 4-2-3-1 or a left-sided forward in a 4-3-3 by ex-Swansea manager Bob Bradley, where he can cut inside onto his favoured right foot and cause problems for defenders.
His conversion rate of 15.3% is bettered only by Vela (21.8%) and he is involved in a goal every 119.8 minutes, a number which will only get better as he improves. His total of 62 dribbles and 51 key passes this season also puts him in the top five of LAFC players for both those metrics.
Rossi has played for the Uruguay U-20 side, but is still eligible to play for Italy and Armenia (through his father and mother respectively) as well as the USA, as he earned his green card earlier this year. Make no mistake, Rossi would improve whichever side he chooses to represent.
