Boasting pace, power and presence at a height of about 6ft 3in, online footage of Chermiti playing academy football at Sporting depicts a man among boys.
“I remember he scored a beautiful goal against Benfica, a bicycle kick,” recalls Coelho, who coached the Rangers striker at under-15s and under-19s.
“It was the first time I’d seen Youssef. Against Benfica, all goals are special, but a bicycle kick from a 14-year-old boy isn’t normal.”
What is normal is his character. Coelho says Chermiti, who has played and scored for Portugal at almost every youth level, is “a normal boy with great talent”.
“He really made a name for himself in the Sporting academy with the under-15s,” the 36-year-old adds.
“We won the national championship and he was one of the best players in the league. He scored 12 goals in the last 10 games.
“He’s very tall but so strong when he’s running into space. When he has space behind defenders, he’s very good.
“In the box, he has good mobility, but his best behaviour is attacking the back post – he’s so, so good at that.”
Chermiti’s reputation only strengthened as he progressed through the age groups and he was promised a pathway by now Manchester United boss Amorin.
He was handed his first-team debut at 18 off the bench in a draw with rivals Benfica in January 2023 and scored his first goal a month later in a 1-0 win away to Rio Ave.
Chermiti netted again in the following match, a defeat by Porto, with opposition head coach Sergio Conceicao hailing him as “a young player of great quality”.
Among Chermiti’s 10 Sporting starts, Amorin also trusted him to lead the line in the first leg of a Europa League quarter-final away to Juventus that ended in a 1-0 defeat.
In a relatively small sample size of 839 league minutes – the equivalent of about nine full 90-minute matches – Chermiti ranked high in multiple attacking metrics in his breakthrough campaign.
On a per-90 basis, his expected goals, touches in the opposition box and aerial duel success placed him among the top forwards in Portugal’s top flight.
When you consider he was a teenager at the time, those numbers become more impressive.