Today Indiana Vassilev made his debut for Aston Villa in the Premier League coming in off the bench against Brighton. The game ended with a 1:1 draw.
American whizz kid Indiana Vassilev is the latest talented teenager to walk through the Bodymoor Heath doors. Vassilev impressed Aston Villa scouts at the 2017 under-17s World Cup and arrived in the Second City soon after. The USA youth international has featured sporadically for the club’s youth team and is the latest in a line of talented youngsters to arrive from overseas. Dimitri Sea and Colin Odutayo - both of whom have gained under-23 recognition recently - signed up two years ago and scouts are already continuing their plans to strengthen the academy once more. And now Vassilev has found himself named on the bench for Villa's FA Cup third round clash.
Who is the new boy wonder?
Vassilev is of Bulgarian heritage and his parents settled in America in the late 1990s. The youngster grew up in Savannah, Georgia, and started playing football at an early age. His father and grandfather also played football which is where Vassilev’s inspiration came from. Vassilev left Savannah to pursue his dream of becoming a professional footballer and started school at IMG Academy in Florida before he reached his teens. Villa have tracked him for a while and first expressed an interest in signing Vassilev, who turned 17 recently, before his 16th birthday. Vassilev started training with USA under-17s before his 16th birthday in preparation for the World Cup in 2017. America impressed out in India before being knocked out by eventual winners England in the quarter-finals. Vassilev has since stepped up to under-23 level and is extremely highly-rated in the USA’s youth set-up.
Although it is yet to be comforted officialy we are pretty sure that his first name is inspired by the most famous archologist of all time - Indiana Jones.
