Jonathan David: The Lille modern super forward who went from amateur to top transfer target in four years
CBSN
David is leading the Ligue 1 scoring charts but there is so much more to his game than just goals
By now you will have undoubtedly heard the name Jonathan David. A goalscoring marvel in France, at the vanguard of the rise of Canadian football and a regular feature in transfer columns: he is firmly established in the rarefied air of next big things. A star of the present. A potential superstar of the future.
In the modern era these players do not usually arrive near fully formed. Even when they are in academies their names are whispered, multi-million dollar transfer fees the norm even before they have played a professional game. Not David.
It is just short of four years since the Canada international made the move to professional football, joining Gent. Prior to that he had been playing at an amateur level with Ottawa Internationals. He had "only one goal: to get to Europe", as he put it on arriving at his current club Lille. Before he was even a teenager that was the ambitious goal he had set himself and one he would stick to rigidly, even offers to go professional in the MLS at 16 could not sway him from his path.
