Nikita Contini

Nikita Baranovsky Contini (Ukrainian: Нікіта Контіні-Барановський; born 21 May 1996) is a Ukrainian-born Italian footballer who plays as a goalkeeper for Crotone, on loan from Napoli.

Club Career

Napoli

Beginnings

Contini was born in Cherkasy, Ukraine to an Italian father Pasquale Contini from Naples, Italy and a Ukrainian mother. When Contini was 3 years old he moved with his family to Giugliano, Campania, Italy. He started his football career at Atletico Giugliano in Italy as a boy, he was brought there by his father at a young age who was a youth coach of Atletico Giugliano, he started playing there at the age of 5 often playing in teams with older boys as he moved up their youth ranks.

In 2007 Napoli played Atletico Giugliano in a friendly and Contini stood out with his great performance and impressed then Napoli juvenile goalkeeping coach Luciano Tarallo. Later that year he went on trials with the Napoli Juvenile team and in 2008 he joined the Juvenile team, things started off very well in his first season at Napoli with excellent displays and going on to get awards for the best goalkeeper in the "Niccolo Galli" youth tournament in Florence and the "Cairo Montenotte" tournament in Savona, Italy, when everything seemed to be going perfect for him a serious knee injury (meniscus tear) following a clash with teammate Gennaro Tutino forced him to miss the remainder of the season.

After being out injured for so long he was slowly brought back into the team by coach Nicola Liguori in the next season, he decided to focus on bringing back Nikita into the team by giving him match time and showing off his talent in the tournament "Beppe-Viola Arco di Trento". Nikita played in all the games in tournament which took the Juvenile team (Azzurrini) all the way to the final against Inter Milan after having saved two penalties in the previous match against Atalanta to get them into the final. Napoli was defeated in the final by Inter Milan but Nikita