Santiago Londono’s career may be in its infancy, but the fresh-faced frontman is already producing performances packed with quality well beyond his years, and he boasts the winning mentality to match. Having dazzled as Colombia’s star performer at the South American U-17 Championship earlier this year, in which he helped his nation book a berth at the FIFA U-17 World Cup Qatar 2025™, the 17-year-old Envigado forward’s game revolves around three watchwords: hard work, discipline and humility.
With his name regularly doing the rounds in the transfer rumour mill, Londono – who notched five times at the aforementioned continental extravaganza and has plenty of experience in the Colombian top flight under his belt – is just focusing on controlling the controllables. He trains regularly with Freddy Hurtado’s Colombia U-17 team and plays his part for his club, a prolific breeding ground for promising youngsters. He started studying English some time ago to prepare for the next chapter in his journey, although he is still unsure what the future holds – on and off the pitch.
Londono spearheaded Colombia’s campaign at the aforementioned South American U-17 Championship, scoring five goals as his team finished runners-up to Brazil, who they lost to on penalties in the final. He is now preparing to bring his talents to the U-17 World Cup, where Colombia have been drawn with Germany, El Salvador and Korea DPR in Group C. FIFA caught up with the young attacker to discuss his career to date and look ahead to Qatar 2025.
Santiago Londono: I think it was a great campaign both individually and collectively. As a team, we always tried to create a family atmosphere, and everyone was incredibly supportive of one another throughout. I think that’s what helped us to progress as far as we did.
I’ve always been very driven, mainly thanks to the encouragement I’ve received from my parents and from having both of them there for me. Wanting to provide a better future for my family is motivation enough for me.
We’ve come on leaps and bounds. I think we needed to fine-tune a lot of the details. Our youth national teams have made great progress, as has our senior side, and it speaks volumes that we’ve reached the World Cup tournaments at all three levels. We may have achieved that goal, but our main objective still lies ahead of us because we want to give a really good account of ourselves in those competitions.
All three of our teams play a high-intensity game, which really showed at the Copa America, the South American U-17 Championship and in the U-20 continental competition. We all went out there and looked to get on the front foot, which was maybe something we’d failed to do in the past, and we played fearlessly and with real character. In our case, we were playing on our own patch, and in every match, both teams looked to take the game to one another.
We’ve been talking about it as a group. We know it’s a huge opportunity, especially with the team that we’ve been building. This is a great chance for us to make our mark. I think winning a FIFA trophy would be a dream come true for all of us, and it would show just what we’re capable of as a team and as individuals. That’s the ultimate source of motivation for us.
I played on the wing when I was much younger, but I’d already switched to being a centre-forward by the time I was 12 or 13. I’ve had to put in a lot of work to hone my craft in the position and I think it shows, but there’s still room for improvement.
I think that scoring goals is the priority for any team, but I also try hard to drop deep, create space and to always be available and make diagonal runs. But, as a forward, my main aim is always to find the back of the net.
We know that any global tournament is always going to be extremely tough. We’ve analysed every opponent. We know that Germany are the reigning champions, so that first match promises to be a great contest. We’re going out there with a real hunger to win that opener and to put up a strong fight against the other two teams, who we know are quite aggressive sides..
I think it makes things more competitive for us. With games every three days, preparation is everything in these tournaments. It all comes down to how ready we are when we get out there, and that’s exactly what we’re working on, ensuring we’re ready.
