Luc Castaignos was technically Inter's first signing this summer as the deal was signed on March 4th 2011, from Feyenoord, and should be an excellent acquisition for Inter as the Dutch striker has been receiving praise from around the world and he is being dubbed as the new Thierry Henry.
He was born on the 27th September 1992 in Schiedam, Netherlands and is the top scorer of all time for the Netherlands under-17 national team, though he currently plays for the under-19 national team.
When the 18 year old arrived at the club hotel in pinzolo for his first training sessions with the Nerazzurri he gave an interview to the awaiting journalists :
"It's hard to find words to describe how happy I am to be playing for such a great club as Inter," said Luc. The Nerazzurri shirt will be a way of confirming his talent after all the goals and success he has had in Holland with Feyenoord: "It's true, I find it easy to score and if I'm playing for a great team it should be even easier." He already knows most of his new Inter team-mates ("Wesley Sneijder a bit better because he's Dutch"), but he also played against Luca Caldirola, last season at Vitesse: "I scored my first league goal against him... ". Castaignos is quick and he sees the goal. "Am I like Henry? Lots of people have said this but I am Castaignos and he is Henry."
For those of you that hadn't heard of Luc before he signed for Inter here's a summery of his career so far, he started his youth career at his local Catholic club- Excelsior '20 which he lived close to. His former coach at Excelsior, Paul Benschop, could see Castaignos' quality & talent "Everyone could see how much potential he had. Whenever we conceded a goal, Luc would take care of business."
At the age of 13 he participated in an open day for the regional club Spartaan '20, the Rotterdam club that is a youth partner of Feyenoord, they immediately saw his potential & invited him to join. He played just one season with Spartaan'20 before various professional clubs started to take notice of the youngster, so Feyenoord were warned they could lose him, they responded by signing him to the Feyenoord Academy in the summer of 2007 at 14 years old. On the 30th October 2008 Luc signed his 1st professional contract to keep him at Feyenoord until the summer of 2011 with the option of extending for another 2 seasons.
After a fantastic performance with the Netherlands under-17's at the 2009 UEFA European U17 Football Championship, interest in the Dutch youngster came from the likes of Arsenal, Liverpool, Man Utd, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich & Inter showing that the European elite teams were ready to snatch up the talented 16 year old, Castaignos crushed the rumours on July 22 of that year by telling Feyenoord manager, Mario Been, that he wanted to stay in Rotterdam. On 13th August he trained with the Feyenoord 1st team for the first time and his official debut came on September 24th in the 72nd minute of the KNVB Cup match against Harkemase Boys when he replaced Leroy Fer.
He has shown himself to be loyal by refusing to move even when some of the biggest teams in Europe wanted him and he saw out his Feyenoord contract before signing for Inter back in March. I'm looking forward to see him strutting his stuff on the pitch along side Eto'o & Pazzini as he has a fantastic scoring record, in the 30 games he played for Feyenoord between 2009- 2011 he scored 15 goals and Internationally he scored 13 goals in 17 games for the U17 squad and an awesome 9 goals in 14 games so far for the U19's with his high profile move to Inter i don't think it'll be long before he'll be lining up along side countryman Sneijder for the Dutch national team.
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