Bryan Zaragoza's childhood, the "street" revelation of the League: "I punished him every 10 minutes, he was naughty"

«Like Bryan there are little ones, he is 100% street, he always has been». In the Pichón neighborhood of Málaga, football is everything. Or almost everything. Adjacent to the ring road that surrounds the city and bordering three industrial estates and a cemetery, Tiro de Pichón belongs to the Cruz de Humilladero district, one of the poorest areas of the capital, where the gross salary barely exceeds 20,000 euros.. Today, at the Santiago Bernabéu, he will have the opportunity to be noticed.

Bryan's love for football was born where it is born to those destined to treat the ball better than anyone else: on the street. Because the Granada striker is not a star molded in a great academy, he did not grow between high and low blocks, between mornings at the gym and afternoons of tactics. His learning was different and that is why he is such a special footballer.. «He has street football etched in his way of playing. El Pichón is a neighborhood where street children play, it is difficult to train them because they are not disciplined, but when they become soccer players it is noticeable,” Pepe Zamora, who coached Zaragoza at CD Tiro de Pichón, explains to EL MUNDO.

“I punished him every 10 minutes”

«I caught him when I was 12 years old, in the first year he started playing 11-a-side soccer. When it arrived at my nursery, I took it without hesitation. It gave me a wonderful impression. He was skinny, tiny… He played that you wouldn't see. “He had a lot of self-confidence and he left the elders very easily,” recalls Zamora, who also admits that he had to punish him more than once. “He was a difficult kid,” he admits with a laugh. «I punished him every ten minutes. He was very naughty. Generally good, but he always messed up something,” says the coach, who lived in the same neighborhood as the little teenager. “It is a conflictive neighborhood,” he acknowledges.

Bryan's football career changed in the youth category and in part thanks to Zamora. El Tiro de Pichón wanted to form a team of senior players to compete in the Honor Division and Zaragoza, who was a first-year player, was not selected.. «I loved him a lot, so I advised him to go to a Nacional club (a lower division), which was going to be more important.. And it went well”. After five seasons, Bryan left Tiro de Pichón and signed for Conejito de Málaga, from where he was able to try his luck in several First and Second Division team quarries.. “He had a very good year and tried out for Valladolid and Betis, until Granada called him and signed him.”

Zaragoza, during a match with Granada. 14 million clause

The rest is history. Zaragoza was loaned for a year to CD Ejido 2012 in the Third Division and upon returning he made his debut with Granada's first team in the Cup, in November 2021. Two years later and after a 21-22 season playing in the reserve team, he has been the hero of the last promotion, scoring three goals in the last three rounds of the Second Division, giving away three key victories for promotion.

This season, his debut in the First Division has not stopped him and at 22 years old he already has five goals in the League and a call-up to the national team, with which he made his debut in the first match of the qualifying phase for the Euro Cup against Scotland.. Curiously, close to home, in Seville.

In May, Granada rushed to renew his contract because the clause was only 2 million euros, but the current one does not seem too expensive for what the footballer is showing: removing him from Los Cármenes would cost 14 million euros, a figure that It has already caught the interest of half of Europe.