Arsenal, Chelsea and Man Utd transfer target Moises Caicedo is expected to leave Brighton this summer; Ecuador international, who started his career with Independiente del Valle in his homeland, is valued at upwards of £70m by the south-coast club In the wake of his country’s World Cup exit last year, when other players were jetting off to high-end holiday resorts, Moises Caicedo was back in Santa Domingo, Ecuador, playing in a local tournament on the same dusty pitch he used as a boy. In footage which went viral in the country, Caicedo, a rising star in the Premier League who had just become Ecuador’s youngest scorer at a World Cup, can be seen finding the net again, only this time as a ringer for Caicedos FC, a team made up of extended family members.
His goal, slotted in at the near post in ramshackle surroundings, helped Caicedos FC win the tournament and was celebrated with a leap, a fist pump, and a gesture of recognition to the few hundred spectators sitting or leaning on fences around the pitch. “This is Moises,” Miguel Angel Ramirez, Caicedo’s former coach at his boyhood club Independiente del Valle, tells Sky Sports with a smile. “Going back to his village, to his family, his friends, playing football, helping everyone there. He’s doesn’t forget his people.” Miguel Angel Ramirez, Moises Caicedo’s manager at Independiente del Valle, explains why the Brighton midfielder is well worth his reported valuation of £70m In fact, Ramirez adds, supporting his “people” – Caicedo is the youngest of 10 siblings – has long been the midfielder’s primary motivation. “It was his biggest target, to have a better house, a car for all of them, to give them a better life. If he was able to do that playing football, the thing he loved the most, even better.”
