With just 19 years old, the latest promise of Ecuadorian football, midfielder Moisés Caicedo, traveled on Friday night with destination to England to start his journey in English football, much more competitive and demanding than what he has seen from the ranks of Independiente del Valle.
Born in Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas into an Afro-Ecuadorian family, Caicedo travels to England to join the modest and century-old Brighton, from the south of England, a team that fights to remain in the Premier League.
He thus joins other young people from the country who in recent years have decided to try their luck in the Old Continent, such as Pervis Estupiñán (23 years old, Villarreal, Spain), Leonardo Campana (20, FC Famalicao, Portugal) and Gonzalo Plata (20, Sporting CP, Portugal).
The common denominator of the four is their belonging to a golden generation of Ecuadorian football that won the South American Championship in Chile in 2019 and finished third in the World Cup in Poland.
Although Estupiñán is a bit older and did not participate in those competitions, he also joined European football at the age of 19, with Granada B in Spain.
The curious thing is that each one was formed in a different team: Estupiñán in Liga de Quito, Campana in Barcelona SC, and Caicedo and Plata did it in Independiente del Valle.
Both belong to a promising local football academy that invests from the grassroots and has already produced other talents, including Cristian Ramírez (26) at Krasnodar in Russia, who left at 18 to Fortuna Dusseldorf in Germany; or Ángelo Preciado (22) at KRC Genk in Belgium.
The farewell of the midfielder was emotional in one of the halls of the Mariscal Sucre Airport in Quito, where he received the fraternal hugs of his parents and other relatives.
Moisés Caicedo, the great PEARL of Ecuadorian football, travels tonight to England to join his new team. He is only 19 years old, but he is an AMAZING PLAYER. Let everything go optimally, break it dad. Details today on #ConexiónDirectv 21:00 @DIRECTVEcuador Channels 610-1610 pic.twitter.com/YvETKvpGum
— Theo Posso (@posso_sports) January 23, 2021
Caicedo has a game that has made a difference in local football, with great skills to defend or attack, precise assists, and even to arrive in the position of the scorer and score in the opposing goal.
"Caicedo is a player who understands the game perfectly, has a good ball touch, good passes, and positioning", said coach Miguel Ángel Ramírez, who finished consolidating him as a footballer at Independiente, and from this upcoming season will coach Inter Porto Alegre in Brazil.
Caicedo went through the youth teams of Independiente del Valle, with whom he became champion of the U-20 Copa Libertadores in 2020, although earlier, in 2019, he had been called up to the main team of the Valley Strikers.
With that shirt, he was also part of the squad that won the 2019 Copa Sudamericana final, in which IDV defeated Colón de Santa Fe 3-1 in the single final in Paraguay.
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Since then, his good performance has also quickly led him to the national team, with which he played the first four matches of the qualifying rounds for the 2022 World Cup at the end of last year.
He made his debut with the Tri in a 1-0 defeat against Argentina; won 4-2 against Uruguay, scoring his first goal with the national team; triumphed 2-3 against Bolivia; and his passes were fundamental for the 6-1 victory over Colombia, standing out before European football scouts.
With his goal against Uruguay, Caicedo became the youngest Ecuadorian to score with the Tri in a South American qualifying match, as Antonio Valencia had done it at the age of 19. (D)