From Estonian third division backpacker to Brighton's £22m Premier League striker

Promise David arrived at Brighton this summer on a season-long loan with an obligation to buy worth up to £22m — a figure that would have seemed absurd just two years ago, when the Canadian striker was playing under-21 football in the Estonian third division and backpacking between clubs with no fixed plan.

The 25-year-old forward’s route to the Premier League ran through Ontario, the United States, Croatia, Malta and Estonia before a data-driven approach from Belgian side Union Saint-Gilloise — where Brighton owner Tony Bloom holds a shareholding — changed everything. When the message first arrived, David assumed it was fraudulent.

“They’ve got a great data scout system, that’s all I can say,” David said. “They picked me out of thin air, but they said they had been monitoring me for a while. At first, I thought it was spam, like a scam. Because if you’re playing in the third division in Estonia, you don’t expect a team playing in the Europa League to call.”

The moment of realisation came on a Zoom call with the club. “Me and my agent at the time both saw it and I was like, ‘Nah, it’s not that.’ And then we sat on a Zoom call and I said, ‘Oh s***, it is them.’ They gave me a whole pitch, but I said yes before the pitch. I was packing my suitcases mid-call. And then, two weeks later, I was in Belgium.”

The numbers that triggered the approach were hard to ignore. David scored 30 goals in 44 first-team appearances for Estonian club Nomme Kalju, enough to surface on scouting platforms and land on Union Saint-Gilloise’s radar. He then delivered 41 goals in 82 games for USG, earning his move to the Premier League.

David credits his nomadic, pressure-free approach to the game as part of what allowed him to develop without the weight of expectation. “I was just backpacking and having fun playing football through Europe, seeing where things would take me next,” he said. “Not really thinking what would come of it. Just thinking about my next meal. A good place found me at Union Saint-Gilloise. There, I was able to train like a professional and live like a professional. And good things came out of it. And then, boom, here I am.”

The Canada international — who carries World Cup ambitions with the 2026 tournament on home soil — insists the step up to English football has not altered his mindset. “Same s***, different day,” he said. “It’s the same thing, different stage.”