Jesurun Rak-Sakyi has been a standout in English youth football over the last year, and top-flight teams from throughout Europe are now interested in loaning him out.
It's a narrative that football fans have heard time and again: the academy player who was released because they were too undersized, only to go on and make it to the top somewhere else.
And it's a route that Crystal Palace youngster Jesurun Rak-Sakyi is aiming to take, with early indicators pointing to a promising future for the forward as he strives for his first-team breakthrough.
Rak-Sakyi has been a standout in English youth football over the last two seasons, with 35 direct goal contributions (20 goals, 15 assists) in 39 games across age groups ranging from Under-18s to U23s.
His 10 goals and five assists in 13 Premier League 2 games this season have earned him two Player of the Month nominations, with the 19-year-old eager to show those who doubted him early in his career wrong.
Rak-Sakyi was released by Chelsea in the summer of 2019, after progressively losing his spot in a team that contained Bayern Munich talent Jamal Musiala and Juventus winger Samuel Iling-Junior, before being left out entirely for the U16 Premier League Cup final win against Arsenal.
Chelsea admired Rak-technical Sakyi's abilities, and when it came to decide on players' futures that summer, his was the final name to be dropped, with the Blues expressing worries about his lack of stature and strength.
Rak-Sakyi, determined not to give up on his ambition, had trials at both Arsenal and Brighton before Palace got a good look at him. The Eagles loved what they saw, and with the Wolves next in line, they moved quickly to give the boy a two-year scholarship.
However, his first 18 months in south London were challenging, as Rak-Sakyi suffered physically once more, and Palace considered not handing him a professional contract until he erupted in January 2021.
After a run of ten games in the U18s in which he scored eight goals and provided nine assists, he signed his first professional contract in April, just in time to make the first-team bench for Palace's last two Premier League games of the season.