Adelaide United's head coach Airton Andrioli has discovered a new talent in Nestory Irankunda, a young player from South Australia. Andrioli, who is now the head coach of Adelaide United in the A-League Men, spotted Irankunda playing for Adelaide Croatia Raiders before the rest of Australia knew his name. Irankunda, who was born in a Tanzanian refugee camp to Burundian parents, has made a rapid rise to become a Socceroos star. Andrioli was the man who discovered Irankunda in South Australia, likening him to a player from South America, he'd 'never' seen a talent like him in Australia. Andrioli was technical director of Football South Australia from 2009 up until 2020. Now, he is coming off a memorable semi-final run with the Reds in the A-League. The 61-year-old has been the mastermind of a South Australian youth program established 17 years ago – one that Adelaide continues to benefit from, with Irankunda and Socceroos teammate Mo Toure headlining the famed production line. Born in Brazil before relocating to Australia in the 1990s, Andrioli still vividly recalls the night he spotted Irankunda playing for Adelaide Raiders at Under-15 level. It was a midweek night. Andrioli saw something a bit different, a bit rare in the way he played. Also, he saw a little bit the bad side of him and his behaviour, those sort of things, that he showed quite early when he was about 14. But then my main focus was, OK, we have something good here. Maybe can we bring him into a better environment? Can we see if this player can maybe fulfil the potential that I sort of saw in him back at that point? That's the reason why we brought him into the NTC (National Training Centre) for a couple of weeks. We met the parents. They couldn't speak much English. We had somebody like a care worker working with him that came along as well. So then that all happened. I then moved from the Federation, to Adelaide United and we skipped that NTC window. I brought him with me because I thought that after working with him for a couple of weeks with the NTC players, you could tell that he was different and he needed a little bit of direction and also somebody that potentially could understand his background and the way sometimes he reacted to certain things. I felt like he needed to be in that environment.