Thierno Barry’s name appears to be on everyone’s lips at the minute, so I thought it worth a deep dive into what makes the young Frenchman tick and how he found himself on Merseyside.
His route to Everton began on a primary-school playground in Lyon, where a woman working in the school canteen noticed him playing football and mentioned him to her partner, a coach at local club AS Montchat.
Barry wasn’t picked up by one of France’s major academies at six or seven, despite growing up in one of the country’s great football cities. There was another fairly significant difference between the boy at Montchat and the player Everton eventually paid around £27m to sign from Villarreal: he wasn’t a striker.
Barry’s childhood in Lyon
Thierno Mamadou Barry was born in Lyon on 21 October 2002 into a family of Guinean heritage. His father, Amadou Korka Barry, represented Guinea in basketball and remembers his son being obsessed with football from primary-school age.
Amadou nevertheless encouraged him to play basketball as well, believing the movement required to lose an opponent on court could help him find space on a football pitch. Football soon took over, and Barry joined Montchat in 2012 after that chance introduction through his school.
He spent four years there before moving to AS Saint-Priest in 2016. Three years later, aged 16, he left the Lyon area to join SC Toulon in the south of France.
By then Barry had spent much of his childhood playing in defence, and his position was still far from settled. Youssef Sif, one of the coaches who worked with him at Toulon, remembers a technically gifted but physically underdeveloped teenager who operated predominantly in central or defensive midfield.
Toulon began pushing him further forward, initially into more attacking midfield positions and then out wide before trying him through the middle. Sif remembers one youth game against Ajaccio when Barry was reluctant to challenge a defender in the air and was substituted after only 20 minutes.
The experience stuck. Barry became more willing to compete physically and, gradually, the midfielder began to resemble a centre-forward.
Rejected by Clermont and Hamilton
There was still no obvious route towards top-level football. Barry had an unsuccessful trial with Clermont while considered a centre-back and, at 18, travelled to Scotland for another trial with Hamilton Academical, where he was assessed as a defensive midfielder.
He continued his studies during his time at Toulon and also worked with younger players at the club. Sochaux recruited him in 2021, but his only season there was spent with their reserves in Championnat National 3, the fifth tier of French football.
Barry scored 10 goals in 22 appearances without making the Sochaux first team. When Beveren offered him a trial in Belgium in the summer of 2022, the 19-year-old decided to take his chance elsewhere.
It proved a good decision. Beveren signed him, and Barry scored 20 goals during his only season in the Belgian second tier as they narrowly missed out on promotion.
Basel had seen enough to sign him in the summer of 2023, although Barry’s first few months in Switzerland could hardly have contrasted more sharply with his year in Belgium. He was sent off in each of his first two competitive appearances and then went 16 league games without scoring.
His confidence suffered and, by his own account, so did his enjoyment of football.
A game of football on a Zanzibar beach
The story of how Barry began to rediscover that enjoyment has little to do with professional football. During a holiday in Zanzibar with his girlfriend, he saw some children playing on a beach. She suggested he join them and Barry went over for a game.
It was football stripped of everything that had been troubling him in Switzerland, and Barry later credited the experience with helping him reset. He returned to Basel and scored nine times during the second half of the campaign before beginning the following season with five goals in his opening three Swiss Super League matches.
Villarreal moved for him in August 2024, paying around £13m. Only three years earlier, Barry had been playing reserve football in the French fifth tier. He scored 11 La Liga goals in his first season in Spain and also represented France at Under-21 level. The Premier League was now a realistic next step.
Everton and another difficult start
Everton signed Barry from Villarreal for around £27m in July 2025. His father has since spoken about his son’s long-standing desire to play in England, but the move didn’t immediately bring goals.
Barry endured another barren spell during his first season on Merseyside. One afternoon against Fulham, however, offered some reassurance that Evertonians could see more in their new striker than his numbers suggested.
He was applauded from the pitch despite not scoring. Barry’s parents were watching and his mother called him afterwards.
“You see, the people love you,” she told him. “You need to give the love back.”
Barry has certainly put plenty into trying to make his move to England work. Away from Everton’s training ground, he has employed a personal trainer, nutritionist, physios and a chef, while also working on specific match situations at home.
On his left wrist is a tattoo carrying three words: Me v Me. It refers to Barry’s belief that the biggest battle is with himself.
At 23, there is still plenty for him to learn. That shouldn’t be surprising given the route he took to get here. Barry wasn’t raised as a centre-forward in an elite French academy. He played in defence and midfield, was rejected after trials with Clermont and Hamilton and was still turning out for Sochaux’s reserves in the French fifth tier in 2021/22.
Five years later, Evertonians are watching him lead the line in the Premier League.
The goals are now bringing Barry plenty of attention, but perhaps the most interesting part of his story is that being a striker was never the plan.
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