Julio Enciso admits that he was too nervous to approach Miguel Almirón. It was June 2021, Enciso had received his first call-up to the Paraguay squad and he wanted to arrange a shirt swap with Almirón, the team’s crack.
“I actually asked the manager at the time, Eduardo Berizzo, if he could ask Miguel for the shirt,” Enciso says. “I was 17 and, as you can understand, I was a bit nervous. It was a very special moment for me – to play for the national team and to meet Miguel like that.”
Berizzo made it happen and so there they were, Enciso – the Libertad prodigy, who moved to Brighton last summer – and Almirón, the Newcastle favourite, handing over their shirts and smiling for a photograph. Enciso exchanged his Libertad ‘19’ jersey; Almirón his Newcastle ‘24’.
“Ah, yes, I remember … Julio asking the manager and all the rest,” Almirón says, after a little prompting; it was obviously not such a big deal to him. “What we knew from the beginning was that Julio was a talent, he had every possibility to go a long way. We saw that the national team shirt did not weigh him down and he is now where he should be – in one of the best leagues in the world.”
The international teammates will be in opposition at St James’ Park on Thursday night; the Premier League meeting between their clubs has plenty on the line in terms of European qualification. Newcastle are determined to secure their place in the Champions League group stage, having last played there in 2002-03, while Brighton are chasing European football for the first time. If a Champions League finish is likely to prove beyond them, the Europa League is firmly within their grasp.
Yet for all the buildup in England, there is just as much pride and excitement in Paraguay, the South American country of 6.7 million people, the majority of whom are football fanatics. The Premier League has long been the most watched overseas competition there and now that Enciso has joined Almirón in it, there is even more interest, Brighton shirts coming to be visible on the streets, those of Newcastle already established.
The game has been billed in the Paraguayan press as Almirón’s Newcastle v Enciso’s Brighton, it is (of course) live on TV and, for the two players, it will offer a reminder of how they are living the dream, of their journeys and, also, the ground that they intend to cover, including with the national team. Paraguay’s last appearance at a World Cup was in 2010 and great responsibility lies with Almirón, 29, and Enciso, 19, for the 2026 finals in the United States, Mexico and Canada. The South American qualifiers start in September.
“Every kid wants to play football and wants to play in the best league and for Paraguayans, that’s the Premier League,” Enciso says. “We would always sit down, family and friends, to watch the big games – typically, it would be Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal. I had a ‘Ronaldo 7’ United shirt that my dad gave me.”
Almirón says: “I also watched a lot of the Premier League on TV – Chelsea, Man United, Liverpool. I remember enjoying Ronaldo, Carlos Tevez, Wayne Rooney. It’s very important for the people of Paraguay to have two players here. It opens the door for other Paraguayan footballers.”
Nine players from Paraguay have made Premier League appearances. Can Almirón name the other seven? “Paulo da Silva, Cristian Riveros, Diego Gavilán … Roque Santa Cruz, Antolín Alcaraz,” he replies, before a pause. “Fabián Balbuena and Juan Iturbe.” Correct.
Santa Cruz is the biggest name – the former Blackburn and Manchester City striker has legendary status in Paraguay, alongside José Luis Chilavert – but Almirón does not feel too far behind. “He’s an inspiration,” Enciso says. “We have him as our ambassador.”
Enciso says that the joy of playing is the most important quality of a Paraguayan footballer but there is also the desire to fight, to use setbacks as fuel. When Almirón was 15, he struggled to make an impression at the academy of Cerro Porteño, one of the big clubs in Asunción, the coach telling him that he was too thin. Almirón remembers how he handled the disappointment – after a defining chat with his mother, who worked at a supermarket.
“She said to me: ‘If you are not going to go back and train hard then you are going to come and work with me in the supermarket – that’s the alternative’,” Almirón says. “That was the motivation for me to get my bag and go straight out again, to return to training. I never worked in the supermarket. It was just this conversation I had with my mum.”
Almirón’s background is humble – he grew up in the San Pablo barrio of Asunción – and he was always driven to help his family. The same is true of Enciso, who was raised in Caaguazú, where he lived with his parents and paternal grandparents. His father was a street vendor, his mother a babysitter and nanny and, as Enciso puts it, the “story was tough”.
“I was pretty much all the time with my grandad because my parents were always out working,” he says. “What my mum really wanted was to have a place of her own and a part of my dream to become a footballer was to make that happen. Thanks to God, I did. I bought them a house in December 2021.”
By then, Enciso was a regular at Libertad. The forward had made his debut for them as a 15-year-old in 2019 and, at 16, he scored with the first touch of his Copa Libertadores debut against Club Wilstermann in the last 16 first leg. There was a reason why he was nicknamed La Joya (The Jewel).
It was hard, at first, for Enciso at Brighton, after his £9.5m transfer. The manager who signed him, Graham Potter, left for Chelsea last September – “A lot of things went through my head at that moment,” Enciso says – and he made only two substitute appearances in the league before the World Cup break.
Since then, he has played in 14 of Brighton’s 20 league games, plus three in the FA Cup, starting the semi-final penalty shootout defeat against Manchester United. He has earned the trust of the manager, Roberto De Zerbi, scoring three times, the last of them in Sunday’s 3-0 win at Arsenal.
The best was the winner at Chelsea in April, a top-corner screamer from outside the area that was special on many levels. His grandfather has died and the game fell on his birthday. “So emotional,” Enciso says. “I’ve watched the goal back a lot of times and it’s the best one I’ve ever scored. Playing against Chelsea … Man United, as well. I used to watch them on TV, so to be actually facing them is incredible.”
Almirón has been one of the season’s feelgood stories. Hugely popular at Newcastle because of his positivity and remorselessness, he has added goals with such a vengeance that everybody wants to know the secret. In his three and a half campaigns at the club before this one, Almirón scored nine league goals. This season, he has 11.
“It cost me a lot [initially] at Newcastle – in other words, it took me time to adapt to the Premier League,” he says. “In football, there are no secrets. It’s down to hard work, training, being responsible, ambitious and looking to improve yourself every day.”
Beneath the boyish smile, Almirón is a serious individual and his admiration for Eddie Howe is clear. The manager, who is similarly immersed in his professional life, has overseen the taking of a full squad and staff picture after each victory but Almirón says it is only one of his psychological ploys.
“The photos when we win are a really great thing for the group; we feel very united,” he says. “But he [Howe] also puts motivational phrases on the wall – it will be like: ‘We are a family.’ And: ‘We are all in this together.’
“A lot has changed since he came in. He is a real motivator who seeks perfection. The other thing I’d say about him is that when you arrive at the training ground you are thinking about football and when you leave you are still thinking about football.”
Almirón says that the “expectation has changed a lot this season, definitely” – on the back of the Saudi takeover, Howe’s arrival, the money spent on signings. And, yes, it adds up to pressure. A lot of it, especially with the goal of the Champions League so close.
“We do feel it,” Almirón admits. “But we try to convert that pressure into motivation. For every player and also everyone connected to the club … the fans … we deserve to qualify. We’ll do our best and, God willing, we will achieve our objective.”
