Barry Ferguson claims that Karamoko Dembele is a “star of the future” after being blown away by the Celtic teenager in his debut against Hearts on Sunday.
Dembele, 16, come off the bench for the second-half of Celtic’s 2-1 win against Hearts and gave a good account of himself in his long-anticipated debut.
Ex-Rangers player Ferguson was particularly impressed with the rarely-seen winger, and believes that his urgency to get on the ball will bode well for him as he continues his development.
“I’ll tell you one thing about him, he was demanding that ball every time Celtic were on it, he was wanting it,” Ferguson told PLZ Soccer [15m05s].
“It’s great to see that, a 16-year-old coming into that kind of atmosphere. It was a massive game in front of 60,000.
Ferguson added: “He is a fantastic talent, you can see.
“But he’s only a young kid, a 16-year-old, you need to give him a bit of time.
“He certainly looks like a star of the future.”
OPINION
It will be very interesting to see what happens to Dembele in the next few years because it has been a long time since Celtic have had a young player that has caused as much buzz as the young attacker. It remains to be seen where Dembele’s international allegiance lies having played for both England and Scotland at youth level, but for the time being, the 16-year-old’s focus should be solely on playing more and more regularly for the Bhoys. We have only see him play once for 45 minutes and he already looks like a player. Imagine how good he will look once he has 10 appearances and maybe a couple of starts under his belt. Of course it’s still early days and a lot can happen to such highly-rated young players. Hopefully Celtic don’t have the next Freddy Adu on their hands though and have themselves the next Neymar, because that is the kind of player that Dembele can craft himself into if his worth-ethic is right and he is afforded plenty of opportunities in senior football.