Published: 17:00, 30 January 2026 | Updated: 17:00, 30 January 2026

Thierno Barry knows all about slow starts, so the fact he began his Everton career with a 16-game drought perhaps should not have been a surprise.

Now the Premier League’s most in-form striker with five goals from his last 10 shots, he can look back and smile at his struggle to produce tangible returns in his first few months in England.

But the 23-year-old has made a habit of being a late bloomer. At one of his former clubs, Swiss side Basel, Barry started out with two red cards and wanted to quit football after what he describes as a ‘horrible six months’.

‘I had played in Belgium (at Beveren) and scored 20 goals, easy! And then I went to Basel and I thought it would be easy to score there, too. It was not,' he tells Daily Mail Sport. 'With the pressure and everything I lost my confidence, I lost the love to play football.

‘I lost everything. My coach told me to go on holiday, turn my phone off and...