This 17-year-old schoolkid could be world class. Can Australian soccer help him get there?

Nestory Irankunda’s phone is going crazy these days. From European clubs like Bayern Munich who want to sign him. From player agents across Australia and all over the world who are desperate to represent him.

“It’s a lot of people – they’re even trying to get through my teammates to get to me. It’s pretty annoying, to be honest,” he says after a session at Adelaide United’s training base, slouched on a chair, not long after his recent call-up to the Socceroos.

Nestory Irankunda is the talk of Australian soccer – and of Parafield Gardens High School, where he’s still completing Year 12.Credit: Roy Van Der Vegt

“Some agent that knows Ronaldo, Neymar, Messi and Suarez, he was texting me. But I don’t really buy into it. I’ve already got some things to focus on. I just ignore it, to be honest.”

It’s a lot for a 17-year-old to deal with, between his commitments in football and at school, where he is still completing Year 12. This hurricane of hype follows him into the classrooms and hallways of Parafield Gardens High, where he is almost always the centre of attention.

“It’s weird, but I’m kind of used to it,” he says.

“A bunch of people bragging about you – Socceroos this, Socceroos that. A bunch of little kids, Year 7s and 8s, asking for autographs. Some Year 10s. Some teachers as well. There was a teacher at the game last week. She was just talking a lot, man, [asking] if I remembered her, this and that.”

If you’ve watched him play for Adelaide United, you’d understand why grown adults are getting so giddy about a teenager. Irankunda is possibly the most exciting talent to have emerged from the A-League in its short history, and has all the tools to become a genuinely world-class player, and the undisputed jewel of a potential new golden generation for the Socceroos – everything except the right mentality, which he happily concedes is a work in progress.

Irankunda is blessed with many physical gifts: blistering pace, formidable strength, a sharp technique, a fearless approach to dribbling, and an innate understanding of the game. But his most breathtaking quality is his right foot, a weapon unlike any other seen in Australian soccer, possibly ever.

When he takes a shot, the ball doesn’t just leave his boot, it explodes off it with such ferocity that it’s hard to believe it’s the same object. It’s genuinely scary; just ask any of Adelaide’s goalkeepers, who have to face him every day, or better yet, Melbourne Victory midfielder Rai Marchan, who took one of Irankunda’s attempts on goal to the head earlier this season and was sidelined with concussion for nearly two months.

From even the most acute of angles, in situations where most other players wouldn’t even bother to try, Irankunda can find the top corner. Every goal he has scored for Adelaide United is a testament to this superpower, which in just 680 minutes of professional football has enabled him to compile a truly jaw-dropping highlight reel, now circulating among the world’s biggest clubs.

And then, of course, there’s the celebratory double or triple backflips which demonstrate his incredible agility.

We would credit United’s assistant coach Airton Andrioli with being the man who first ‘spotted’ Irankunda three years ago – but that would imply it took some sort of rare football genius to realise what was blindingly obvious to Andrioli as he watched the teen play for an Adelaide Raiders junior side in a talent ID match: Irankunda is a freak of nature. Someone was going to spot him eventually.

On that day, Irankunda scored a typical bomb from outside the box. Then he was subbed off, removed his shirt, and petulantly threw it on the ground in front of his coach.

“I thought that was interesting,” says Andrioli, who was working in Football South Australia’s National Training Centre program at the time.

Adelaide United assistant coach Airton Andrioli is the man who can be credited with ‘spotting’ Nestory Irankunda.Credit: Adelaide United FC

It was a perfect encapsulation of the way Irankunda continues to thrill and frustrate his teammates and coaches in almost equal measure. Andrioli acted immediately to bring him onto the official pathway. When he took on a job at Adelaide United soon afterwards, he brought him along too, effectively allowing Irankunda to circumvent the entire state-based system.

Andrioli grew up playing street football in the south of Brazil, and signed his first contract for Gremio, one of the country’s biggest clubs, at age 15 – so he should know what talent looks like. What he saw in Irankunda reminded him of back home, where kids are born with a natural flair and sense of awareness that is uncommon in young Aussies.

“But you could tell that he needed help from a more of an educational point of view – not football-wise, but learning how to deal with discipline, and all these other things,” he says.

Raw ability, as Irankunda is slowly learning for himself, is not enough.

‘There’s no limit to what he can achieve – [as] long as he puts in the work and does the right things. Then he’s going to reach the very top.’

Socceroo Craig Goodwin

Australian soccer is littered with the broken careers of players who are touted as the next big thing – Kaz Patafta, Daniel Arzani, Seb Pasquali, the list goes on and on – but who fail to reach their dizzying potential.

Irankunda’s ceiling is obviously high; perhaps higher than any player before him. But there’s also no guarantee that his career will get off the ground floor, which is why those around him are treating him so delicately, trying to make sure he listens to the right people, pleading with fans and pundits not to put undue pressure on him – fully aware that for the sake of the sport in this country, they simply cannot afford to stuff this one up.

It’s meant being more patient than they usually would when Irankunda loses concentration in the middle of a training session, or doesn’t put his full effort into a drill, turns up late to a meeting, shoots off his mouth, tries to play through a minor injury without reporting it, or doesn’t get enough sleep.

There are glimpses of his short temper in his A-League cameos, like last week’s clash with the Central Coast Mariners, when he needlessly hip-and-shouldered an opponent, rightly copped a yellow card, and was lucky to not get another for referee dissent.

Australia’s World Cup hero Craig Goodwin has taken Nestory Irankunda under his wing.Credit: Adelaide United

He’s made great progress on all of these fronts, but as his coach at Adelaide United, Carl Veart, points out, he’s still got an awfully long way to go.

“I’ve said to Nestor a lot of times that he’s very fortunate that I’m very tolerant to him, because I’m pretty sure there’s a lot of other elite coaches that wouldn’t have allowed him to get to this point,” Veart says.

“He just doesn’t quite understand what’s required. He’s got to where he is now without all that stuff. At times, he thinks, ‘Well, I don’t need to do that, I’ve got here because I’ve done this’. But that’s only got him in the door here. If he wants to get to the next door, and he says he does, then he needs to do everything right.”

Irankunda’s rise is eerily similar to that of Garang Kuol, another A-League wonderkid who built a big reputation before he had even started a senior game, and is now at risk of becoming a cautionary tale. Irankunda is also yet to start for Adelaide United, but he began his career earlier than Kuol, scoring his first professional goal with a beauty of a free kick at age 15. He has now scored more goals than any other A-League player before hitting 18.

Like Kuol, Irankunda comes from a big African family, with two older brothers who helped teach him how to play in their front yard, and five younger sisters. His father Gideon and his mother Dafroza are from Burundi, and escaped civil war for a refugee camp in neighbouring Tanzania, where Nestory was born, before eventually being resettled in Adelaide’s northern suburbs.

Because of his family’s background and the nature of his upbringing, Andrioli said, Irankunda’s life has lacked structure and discipline. “If you meet the family – all humble, nice people. There’s been some issues in his family with his brothers ... it hasn’t been that smooth thing that you expect from the normal family here,” he says. “I guess he had an imbalance in the family, and I guess we need to become a family to him to provide him that structure that maybe he doesn’t have.”

Socceroo Craig Goodwin, who captains Adelaide United, initially doubted Irankunda would last long in a top-level environment. He has since taken him under his wing, and is always trying to show him the bigger picture, and how this cut-throat industry really works.

“I’ve definitely had a few hard conversations with him, [text] messages and in person as well,” he says.

Nestory Irankunda was called up for the Socceroos but didn’t feature in their two recent friendlies against Ecuador.Credit: Getty

“For me in those talks, I’ve been telling him ‘Look, it’s clear, and you can see yourself that when you put in the hard work, you get the rewards.’ And I, personally, think there’s no limit to what level he can achieve – just so long as he puts in the work, has the right attitude and does the right things. Then he’s going to reach the very top.

“But that’s the challenge, to keep him in that good headspace.”

Kuol, 18, is now struggling for game time at Heart of Midlothian, where he is on loan from Premier League club Newcastle United, and has shared with Irankunda some insights on how difficult the next step can be, and how carefully he needs to choose his next move. The pair have bonded since being called into Socceroos camp together for the two friendlies against Ecuador in March, and are both aware that fans are dreaming of them tearing it up on opposite wings for Australia at a future World Cup.

“We speak a lot,” Irankunda says.

Another of Nestory Irankunda’s right-foot howitzers.Credit: YouTube

“Yesterday we had a 20-minute call – we were just talking about the Socceroos, how it is over there at Hearts. He was telling me it was hard, with the coach getting sacked. He’s a nice guy.”

Irankunda would have become Australia’s youngest-ever player had he gotten on the pitch against Ecuador, but Socceroos coach Graham Arnold did not want to saddle him with that label at such a crucial juncture in his development. He expected to play, but understands why he didn’t – although typical of a teenager, has completely forgotten what Arnold said to him when he explained why he didn’t use him.

“A bit of respect, to be honest,” Irankunda says when asked what he learned from Socceroos camp. “Respect the older boys, respect everybody. If I treat them with respect, they treat me with respect.”

On Friday night, Adelaide United will face Wellington Phoenix in an elimination final at Coopers Stadium. Irankunda will come off the bench in the second half, and when he begins his warm-up, you’ll be able to feel the sense of anticipation building in the crowd, the murmurs between mates that the kid is coming on, and so literally anything could be about to happen.

Sometimes it’s easy to forget that’s all he is. A kid.

“It’s hard, sometimes,” Irankunda says.

“It’s good, it makes me feel good – just last week, when I was coming on, the crowd went crazy. I wasn’t even on the pitch, they saw me running to the bench. It was as if we scored a goal or something.

“It’s high expectations. The fans, people all over the world, are expecting me to score every game that I play. The pressure is coming on now, but I’m not too bought into it, social media and stuff. I don’t really care. That’s just football.”

Irankunda is in no rush to make any decisions about his future – he can’t move abroad anyway until the first transfer window until after he turns 18, which isn’t until the end of the next A-League season. There are clubs from the Premier League and German Bundesliga keeping a very close eye on him – the hot rumour is that Bayern Munich wants to sign him and loan him back to Adelaide until he’s ready for the next stage of his career.

When that will be, or even if that will be, nobody really knows.

“We need to understand he’s still very young,” Andrioli says.

“And I really hope he can make that transition from using all the natural gifts that he has to understanding what it takes to become a professional footballer. He’s got the drive you want to succeed, he’s got all of those things – if he can find the other elements, I think he’s a tremendous prospect for Australian football.”

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