David Babunski: Reared at Barcelona, raring to go at Tannadice

New arrival David Babunski hopes the mentality established during his grounding at Barcelona can help Dundee United achieve “something special”.

The 30-year-old midfielder was with the Catalan giants from ages 12 to 22 before spells in Serbia, Japan, Romania and Hungary.

Coming through the ranks at the famous La Masia academy, he rubbed shoulders with Lionel Messi, Andres Iniesta, Neymar and Xavi and was coached by Pep Guardiola and Jose Enrique.

“To be able to train with those players, see how they think on the pitch, the kind of decisions that they make, it allowed me to improve my own game a lot and learn a lot from them,” said the North Macedonia international.

“I was able to train multiple times with the first team because they give a lot of opportunities to the younger players, so that was wonderful experience for me.

“Expect nothing less than victory in every single game, that is how I was taught and raised at Barcelona, to be very ambitious. I hope I can add that kind of value to this club as well.”

On Tuesday, Babunski enjoyed a good 66 minutes on his United debut, while his compatriot Kristijan Trapanovski scored and set up the other two goals in a comfortable Premier Sports Cup win over Stenhousemuir.

The playmaker sounded out Bojan Miovski before his move to Tannadice and the international team-mates could have been together at Aberdeen, with United boss Jim Goodwin revealing efforts to take him to Pittodrie two years ago.

Babunski also spoke of “fantastic coach” Ange Postecoglou, having played under the former Celtic manager at Yokohama F. Marinos.

On his aspirations at United, he added: “From the moment I arrived, I felt how big this club is and the expectations are very high.

“We want to meet these expectations with ambition, with hard work and hopefully we can do something special this season and fight for the top positions in the table.”