Wolves in for Celta wonderkid Lopez – the former Suffolk schoolboy!

Wolves have caused a stir by moving for Celta Vigo youngster Fer Lopez. A special talent, the 21-year-old playmaker has left many supporters of the Spanish club in a rage about his impending exit. But maybe Lopez was always destined for a return to England.

That is right, the move to Molineux for a reported £19.5m will not be his first taste of the English game. A term here aged just 14 still resonates at the Suffolk school where he studied - and at Bacton United '89, the club where he trained alongside grown men.

Ryan Owens was the coach of the senior side then competing at step seven of the English league pyramid when a tiny young Spaniard turned up to join the sessions. "He was different gravy. Just a completely different level," Owens tells Sky Sports.

• No Sky? Get Sky Sports or stream with no contract on NOW 📺
• Choose the Sky Sports push notifications you want! 🔔
• Sky Sports to show 215 live PL games from next season

Only a boy, he was not permitted to play any actual games. "But he would join us for the shooting sessions and the small-sided games. He would spend the whole training session putting the ball into the top corner of the net and taking the rise out of players."

Owens adds: "He had a wicked sense of humour. We had one player who he would just nutmeg again and again. He would love to wind him up. On the journey home in the car, he would just be laughing." He pauses. "That kid is playing against Real Madrid now."

It is quite the story, one that came about because Owens' friend Paul Grainger - "a bit of a legend on the local football scene" - had brought Lopez along to Bacton in the hope of adding to his football education. Finding fresh challenges for the lad was proving tricky.

Grainger was coaching at Finborough, the private school near Stowmarket where Lopez had enrolled in the autumn of 2018. "It was done with a view to providing some new experiences for him and to help with his language skills," Grainger tells Sky Sports.

The plan was for Lopez, already a talent within Celta Vigo's academy, to train twice a week with Norwich City too. But that was not always easy. "He used to have to get a taxi to Ipswich and then a train to Norwich. He used to have to see me to get his taxi fare."

That is because Grainger had a dual role as the school accountant. When Lopez became a little disillusioned at Norwich - in a familiar trope of English football, they "told him he was too small" - the boy asked Grainger for extra one-on-one sessions.

"It was to keep his levels up so that he would still be fit when he went back to Vigo." And what did he think of the young Lopez? "I have seen some of the best players in the world play football. I have never seen a footballer like him. He was literally incredible.

"From the first day, I knew he was going to be a superstar."

Grainger is full of stories. "I remember trying to get him to do volleys into a basketball net in a thunderstorm, which I thought would be hard. He got them all in so I switched it for a netball post so there was no backboard and he still did it. The precision was crazy.

"I was blown away by what he could do with a football.

"We would do free-kicks with a small goal as a wall, bending it into the big goal. He would put 30 in a row into the top corner. It was his vision. And that obsession with nutmegs. He would constantly nutmeg you with the leaves that we would walk past."

Galicia is no stranger to a downpour so that did not put Lopez off. "I was out in torrential rain with him for three hours once, peeling my socks off in the end, it was that wet. There was no way he was stopping. He had unbelievable dedication. A hunger for perfection."

And a fierce appetite too. "I played him in a cup game where virtually all the school came out to watch and I took him off with a minute to go so that he would get his own individual round of applause because we had won 7-1 and he had scored five of them.

"Instead, he looked at me and said, 'Why did you take me off? There is a minute left, I could have got another goal'." No wonder Grainger decided to take Lopez to see his friends at Bacton in the hope of providing a stiffer test against adults. It was to no avail.

"We thought it would toughen him up a bit," Grainger recalls. "The first thing he did on the pitch was a backheel nutmeg of someone, spinning past them and putting a cross in that they scored from. All the adults just stood there and looked at each other."

Being a substitute for Bacton became a chore for another reason - the experience of having to warm-up with the wonderkid. "Nobody wanted to be on the sideline on a Saturday. You would spend the whole game watching the ball fly between your legs."

Those Bacton players will feel a little less shocked at being undone by a small boy these days. Lopez made his LaLiga debut in December, three days after scoring twice in the Copa del Rey. He has since played away at Atletico Madrid, Barcelona and Real Madrid.

"It is quite a weird thing when you get a message off someone who has just played against Real Madrid at the Bernabeu," says Grainger, laughing. "We never lost touch. Most weekends we exchange messages about the game. I watch virtually all of them."

For Grainger, the pride is obvious. It is almost seven years since he was taking him to Carrow Road to watch an England U21 game and putting him through his paces on those cold and wet Sundays - not asking a penny for what he still regards as a privilege.

"Why did I do it? Imagine you were into cars and someone said you could look after their Lamborghini or Ferrari for four hours a week? For me, life does not get better than coaching someone like that. Suddenly, you have a kid who can do literally everything."

It went so well that Grainger was entrusted with looking after Lopez's little brother when he came over to England. He still coaches a handful of youngsters but not as many as he once did. "Since Fernando, I only work with the really good ones," Grainger explains.

"I have a young striker who had a trial coming up. Fernando had just come off the pitch at Real Madrid - literally. And he said, 'How is Alfie getting on?' I told him about the trial and he sent him a video message. Of course, it blew the kid away. It's a mark of the lad."

Aside from his obvious gifts, it is this emotional maturity that helps convince those who know him that he will reach the top. "He is so intelligent." Lopez is studying for a degree in law and business administration. His father is a notary, his mother is a psychologist.

"The whole family are absolutely fantastic people." Having attended the O Castro British School, just outside Vigo, the language will certainly not be a problem either. "He speaks better English than I do." And that little 14-year-old boy now stands 6ft 2in tall.

It is why not too much should be read into his relatively belated LaLiga debut. At Celta, they understood that it would take time, which is why they protected his development. "He had a late growth spurt, that is all," explains Grainger. "He has filled out now."

Tipped for big things as long ago as 2022 by Celta legend Iago Aspas, there has since been interest from Spain's biggest clubs as well as Juventus in Italy. His profile has grown significantly since breaking into the first team, his talent immediately apparent.

Seen as the heir to Aspas, he has been used in his role on the right. "They quite often play him on the right-hand side, so he can cut in from there. But he can play central midfield, No 10, wide in the front three, pretty much anywhere in midfield and up front."

He was excellent against Atletico, scored in a win over Mallorca and netted the opener in a 3-0 triumph over Villarreal. The boy who enjoyed himself on the playing fields of Suffolk is now lighting up Spain. "He can sit five players on their backside with his skill."

His quality is illustrated by the fact that he averaged a successful through-ball more often than any other player this past season in LaLiga. "He has the vision to pull a team apart." His dribbling skills are also a standout, just gliding beyond his opponents.

Lopez puts his supreme dribbling skills down to the hours of work that he put in with Grainger, although the man himself takes no credit. "The best thing I taught him was that if you do boot the ball out of play you have to shout, 'Have it!' He still does it now."

A little bit of that English influence already there, then.

Now he is being billed by some in the British media as a possible replacement for the departed Matheus Cunha at Wolves. The club themselves are keen to downplay those comparisons. This is a young prospect who will surely need some time to adjust.

But Lopez's long-term potential is limitless. "I have already been to a couple of bookies to see if I could bet on him playing for Spain at the 2026 World Cup," admits Grainger. "I have no doubt that he will become an international footballer. There is nothing missing."

As for Owens, the former Bacton boss, he is still amused that the world is now getting to see what he did all those years ago. "He reminds me of Riyad Mahrez. The ball just sticks to his feet." He adds with a laugh: "From Bacton to LaLiga to the Premier League."

Sky Sports to show 215 live PL games from next season

From next season, Sky Sports' Premier League coverage will increase from 128 matches to at least 215 games exclusively live.

And 80 per cent of all televised Premier League games next season are on Sky Sports.