COLUMN: La Liga’s third fastest player who went from amateur football to Spain prospect in two years

Last month, LaLiga repeated its annual tradition of clocking the fastest players in the top flight of Spanish football. I look forward to this every year, because I am a big nerd and I love this league.

All 20 teams get a representative in the “fastest player” graphic, and there are always one or two surprises. Most people expect players like Vinicius, Inaki Williams, and Thierry Correia to feature high up the list each year, but others – like Savinho, Bryan Zaragoza, and Samu Omorodion – are among the league’s revelations as 2023 turns to 2024.

It is entirely too appropriate that Samu is Deportivo Alaves’ fastest player. He clocked the third-fastest time among all LaLiga players at 35.4 km/h, his speed mirroring his meteoric rise over the opening months of the 2023/24 season. The teenager began the year as the pearl of Granada’s academy and has now found his footing at Alaves – on loan from Atletico Madrid, which hopes he will form a major part of its future.

Born in the North African city of Melilla, which lies along Spain’s non-contiguous border with Morocco, Samu and his parents moved to Andalusia when he was little and he grew up in Seville. Samu played for hyper-local AD Nervion to begin his career, and – despite the proximity to the Ramon Sanchez Pizjuan – he made the leap to Granada’s academy in 2021. Sevilla were among the cabal of clubs that jostled to sign Samu on loan in August, but he had been playing in Los Nervionenses’ backyard the whole time.

Within a year, Samu had debuted as a 17-year-old for Recreativo Granada, the reserve team playing in the fourth tier of Spanish football. Last season, he scored 14 goals in 29 games and added four more in the four-game promotion playoff slate, helping Granada’s B team