“You deserve it,” Barcelona manager Hansi Flick told Diego Kochen in the summer of 2024, when the German coach selected the 18-year-old American prospect for the club's preseason tour in the United States.
Initially the fourth-choice goalkeeper, the U.S. youth international quickly caught Flick’s attention, earning the chance to train with the first team within weeks of the manager's arrival. Since then, Kochen has made the bench eight times for the senior squad across three different competitions while continuing to impress with Barcelona Atlètic, the club’s reserve team.
At just 18, Kochen is being touted as the future of Barcelona; a storied program once home to Lionel Messi, Thierry Henry, Ronaldinho, Xavi, and Iniesta -- among countless other superstars and legends of the game -- the U.S. youth international is being looked at as a potential cornerstone of the Blaugrana for years to come.
Exceptional with his footwork on the ball, and agile between the posts, he's being trained in La Masia to be the heir to the Catalan Club's goalkeeping issues, while he himself has ambitions to reach the top. A backup goalkeeper on Mauricio Pochettino's November CONCACAF Nations League quarterfinals team that defeated Jamaica over two legs, the Barca youngster earned his first camp under the USMNT manager and was handed an opportunity to impress his potential future international teammates, too.
“First of all, he’s a good kid,” Christian Pulisic said of Kochen in November after featuring alongside training with him during the camp. “He fits in well with the group."
He added, “I’d be lying if I said I’d seen so much of him [in training], but I’ve seen him make a couple of good saves, and that’s his job at the end of the day. And obviously he’s doing really well for himself over there (at Barcelona), so it’s exciting to see. We know he’s gonna have a bright future.”
Kochen, meanwhile, hopes he finds himself in the mix of the program over the next year, with ambitions to be included in Pochettino's 2026 FIFA World Cup roster.
"It would be surreal, but I'm there for whatever the country needs," he told ESPN earlier this month. "Whatever position it needs me in, I'll be there 100 percent. If it's the first goalkeeper in the 2026 World Cup, if it's the second, if it's the third, whatever they need me to be, I'll be there at 100 percent."
Until then, though, Kochen has to maintain a level head and work towards his goals.
The realization of the U.S. goalkeeping situation is real though, for both fans, the program, and the talent in the pool. So the question looms: could he be the future of the USMNT? Barcelona? What does his ceiling look like?
GOAL takes a look at the 18-year-old's rise to stardom, from playing Manchester City at age 11 in a tournament in Miami to moving to Spain with his family and now, working his way up the pecking order at one of soccer's most historic clubs in Catalonia.
