Antoine Semenyo #11

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Arsenal, Millwall, Reading and Tottenham turned Semenyo down as a youngster, and Palace let him go at 15 after eight weeks on trial. “I’ve never been so upset in my life about football. I was crying to my dad,” he told The Guardian in 2024. “I stopped playing for a year, just focused on school.” But, via a youth academy programme he earned a trial at Bristol City in 2017 and signed his first professional contract there. He had three loans spells before establishing himself, then joined Bournemouth for £10m in 2023, and Man City for £64m in January. “Sometimes I get memories flash up on my phone from when I was out on loan, and I compare them with now,” he said. “You go on a trip down memory lane and it is like: ‘Wow, you’ve come a long way.’” He has the word ‘chosen’ tattooed on his back. He told GQ: “I looked at [basketballer] Jayson Tatum's tattoos – he has the name of the street he grew up on and other stuff, and it said ‘chosen’ on his back. I was like, you know what? This resembles me. I feel like the chosen one, I feel like God's chosen me to be in this position.”

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