JHON DURAN is the blockbusting strike sensation who steams through defences like a runaway train.
Yet when he was a kid, that unstoppable incendiary style once threatened to derail his own dreams of glory.
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Duran, 20, has been Aston Villa’s star of the season so far, capped by a stunning winner in the club’s 1-0 Champions League victory against Bayern Munich.
Although nine of his ten appearances have come off the bench, his six goals top Villa’s scoring charts and made him a Holte End hero.
The Colombian’s pace and power makes him impossible to knock off the ball.
But in his early days at Envigado FC back home, that heart for a battle and refusal to back down once brought more cards than a casino croupier.
Youth coach Wilberth Perea, the man Duran sees as a second father, knew he was a special talent.
Perea, whose assistant was Colombian legend James Rodriguez’s father, revealed: “He first got my attention at 11 and always had an overwhelming personality.
“Jhon had such a strong character who didn’t back down from anyone and was afraid of no one.
“He had the heart and soul of a child but when competing was totally different. He always played at the limit, no matter the cost.
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“He’s doing it against the best defenders in England but even as a young player, against older and more experienced ones who played dirty, he didn’t care.
“Even then he was like a runaway train. Jhon just crushed them without giving them a chance and his style of play meant he got so many cards.”
Fining the up-and-coming Duran was no option as the kid from the humble background had little money.
The solution came with punishing laps of the pitch — plus a series of rockets from his coach that often reduced him to tears.
Perea added: “We couldn’t impose fines, so made him run round the athletics track at the stadium, that’s why he has an explosive capacity and such a long sprint trajectory.
“There were many moments in the Under-15 locker room I had to show such a temper at times it made him cry.
“His mother and father, Saturnina and Regino, are humble people and I knew how hard it had been for them to support their family. I told Jhon, ‘You have to give your parents a better life. Please don’t waste the chance’. It touched his pride and, at times, he didn’t like it.”
Yet he knuckled down and, when he signed pro, the club gave him a place to live where he could bring his parents.
Skipping school
There were still hiccups along the way, though — like skipping school so often that Perea would make regular trips just to check he had turned up.
He joked: “I would make surprise visits to school and if Jhon wasn’t there, I’d furiously go round to his house and he’d be in bed listening to reggae!
“Sometimes I felt like grabbing him by the ears and throwing him out of the window. The school janitor used to laugh and said I was the student, not Jhon.”
Duran is passing every footballing test with honours this season.
After a stuttering start to life at Villa, who signed him from MLS side Chicago Fire for an initial £14.75million last term, his career has exploded.
And when he hit that stunning lobbed winner against Bayern, Perea admitted it left him sobbing with pride.
He said: “I called Saturnina and we were both crying. All those days he said he was fed up and wanted to throw in the towel, now he’s scoring against the best teams in the world.”
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