The U17 National Team is fighting for the European championship title in Estonia: tonight at 19:00, the young Italian players will face Spain, with the goal of securing a pass to the final on Sunday. And the young team coached by Daniele Franceschini has a player from Prato: Diego Perillo, a striker who has been playing in the youth sector of Empoli (and is increasingly impressing). Born in Prato on March 17, 2009, he was the one who scored the goal that allowed Italy to beat France 1-0 in the second match of the group stage. "I'm happy about the goal, because it helped the team win – commented the player - the game was very balanced, with opportunities from both sides, but we managed to suffer and bring home an important victory". Diego is not yet a major, but his call-up to the national team is not casual and looking at his path, it's hard not to talk about predestination: he started playing at five years old in Vaianese Impavida Vernio, then moved to Prato and transferred to Maliseti Tobbianese in 2016. And the following year, Empoli noticed him, taking him to their youth sector. From there, it was a crescendo: in the last season, Perillo was one of the pillars of Empoli U17, led by Lorenzo Tonelli, scoring 23 goals in just 22 games. Numbers that allowed him to earn the blue shirt and debut in the Primavera 2 championship with the Empoli U20 jersey (last December against Bari). A modern center-forward, who has as his reference players (by his own admission) Stiven Shpendi from Empoli and Francesco Pio Esposito from Inter. Certainly, in this European Championship, he was an indispensable element for Franceschini. He played in all three games, for a total of 199 minutes, contributing with a goal and an assist to Italy's first place in Group B of the European Championship. Diego, together with his teammates, can and must dream of the European title. But who knows, with this pace, he may not arrive in the next few years to make his debut among the professionals. As he dreamed when, as a child, his mother Lucia took him to play in the gardens. "Wearing the blue shirt is a great honor – he concluded - Scoring, for me, is a huge emotion. When I go onto the field, I think of two things: helping my teammates and scoring".