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It was a busy weekend after a busy summer for Francesco Camarda as he quite literally shuttled between the AC Milan senior team and Milan Futuro.

As La Gazzetta dello Sport recall, Camarda scored the first league goal in the history of Milan Futuro at 16 years, 5 months and 22 days, and one can’t help but think that there was an element of fate involved.

Camarda experienced a weekend as a pro player. He sat on the bench with Milan at the Olimpico against Lazio, rushed back to Milan and at 18:00 CEST the next day he played in Serie C. That’s over 500km of travelling.

Most kids at 16 experience the beginning of September in a glum way, waiting for school to start after a summer break, but things could not be more different for one of the most talked about players at his age.

However, Camarda scored a goal in Serie C which almost certainly puts him among the youngest ever at that level. You can’t compare Milan and Milan Futuro, but the youngest Rossoneri scorer in Serie A is Gianni Rivera, at 17 years and 80 days.

Camarda meanwhile will have to go back to school for real: he is is enrolled in a linguistic high school and in the next nine months he will have to balance education and football. Even more than that, he will have to find a compromise between school, Milan and call-ups for the youth national teams.

On paper, he will be the starting centre-forward of Milan Futuro and he will be seen very little in the first team because of Morata, Abraham, Okafor and Jovic. A year ago, however, who expected to see him on the pitch in Serie A at all? F

rancesco still has a lot to grow technically and is sometimes not precise, but physically he already appears more robust. When the referee whistled the penalty for Milan (which he won), he went to get the ball to tell everyone: “I’ll kick.” That in itself is early signs of leadership.

This article first appeared on SempreMilan and was syndicated with permission.

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