Luis Fernando Muriel: the Colombian star that shines in Europe

He was born in Santo Tomás on April 16, 1991, in humble conditions, but with an admirable spirit, which helped him to solve the economic adversities of his childhood. His life story, like that of many Colombian players, is admirable since the leap to success was built from scratch, selling lottery in the streets of his municipality to obtain resources and thus be able to go to train in the city of Barranquilla.

In his first years of sports training, he demonstrated a change of pace and a great ability to define, attracting the attention of scouts at the national level. That was how Deportivo Cali gave him the opportunity to belong to the quarry and later to make his debut in Colombian professional soccer at the age of 17, in 2009.

First steps

The good numbers and the talent he showed in the "sugar team" prevented Luis Muriel from playing for several seasons in the Colombian league. The player from Santo Tomás only played 11 games in the national income.

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In 2009 he played a league game and two cup games, scoring 2 goals in the last competition, for a scoring average of 0.66. In 2010 their numbers improved dramatically. In 6 months the player played 10 games in the national league, obtaining his first hat-trick and achieving the modest sum of 9 goals and 5 assists; enhancing the player's career and allowing him to appear on the radar of European teams.

On July 1, 2010, Muriel was sold to Udinese in Italy for 1.5 million euros.

A decade in Europe

His early years in Europe positioned him as a promising youngster. Udinese, Granada, and Lecce were his first teams, where he showed great capabilities, drawing the attention of different teams within the Italian league. It was thus, as in the season 15/16 he disembarked in Sampdoria, a team in which he exploited his capabilities and achieved great presentations.

Thanks to the numbers of that season, Muriel had the most expensive loan of his career when he went from Sampdoria to Seville for 24.5 million euros. He was active in Spanish soccer for a year and a half, and before his successful signing with Atalanta, he was part of the Fiorentina squad.

In the first season with Atalanta, Muriel obtained two great distinctions: scorer of the team with 19 goals and player who has scored the most goals coming from the substitute bench with 11 annotations.

Currently, Muriel continues to star in great performances with Atalanta. To date he has played 24 games, scored 15 goals, and assisted 7 times, ranking third in the Serie A scorers table (surpassed by Cristiano Ronaldo with 20 and Romelo Lukaku with 18) and placing him 5 in the highs table. assistants.

Muriel's great performance has been recognized by different media. Last month, Muriel was voted Atalanta's best player over Duván Zapata and Josip Iličić. In the same way, according to the FUTBOLRED portal, Muriel is the eighth attacker with the best performance in the Italian league with 83.5 qualifications.

The good seasons of Luis Muriel have made the player go back on the market and have a market value of 22 million euros, according to the Transfermarket platform. For this reason, everything seems to indicate that the coffee star is more current than ever and promises to be a protagonist in the next market of countries, where it has great possibilities of becoming a giant in Europe.