<\/p>\n
James Woods, the Malawian diplomat and sports-business figure who was part of a sports group who backed Yan Diomande in the early years of his career, reflects on the making of a \u20ac140m footballer<\/p>\n
Four years ago, Yan Diomande was an unknown teenager, his name familiar only to the small network of scouts and agents whose job is to spot players before anyone else does. This week, Real Madrid confirmed his signing in a deal worth up to \u20ac140m – the most expensive transfer of an African footballer…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Read more on AllAfrica.com<\/a> James Woods, the Malawian diplomat and sports-business figure who was part of a sports group who backed Yan Diomande in the early years of his career, reflects on the making of a \u20ac140m footballer Four years ago, Yan Diomande was an unknown teenager, his name familiar only to the small network of scouts and agents […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":188473,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1087],"tags":[258,256,6287,6560,6183,6555,55089,12371,10316,6559,1218,25595,15532,13601,257,6884,254,32176,37342],"class_list":["post-240630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ivory-coast","tag-africa","tag-africa-news","tag-africas","tag-coast","tag-cote-divoire","tag-cote-divoire-news","tag-diomande","tag-expensive","tag-footballer","tag-ivory","tag-ivory-coast-news","tag-james","tag-madrid","tag-malawis","tag-news","tag-real","tag-south-africa-today","tag-woods","tag-yan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240630\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/188473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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South Africa Today Africa \u2013 West Africa C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire (Ivory Coast)<\/a> News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"