Pedri, the footballer who has it all

Pedri reappeared in January after half a season recovering from the exhausting previous campaign, when he set a record for games played between Barça, the Olympic team and the absolute team, and the team stood out, needing more of the magic of the Canarian interior than of its goals , four, the same scored in 13 games as in the 52 of the season. Basically there are five, but the blow from Mestalla, which grazed Aubameyang’s back, was awarded to the Gabonese. Xavi Hernández asks him to shoot and Pedri shoots.

But not only does Pedri do that, “a footballer who is already worth paying a ticket for”, in the words of Victor Munoz, Former midfielder and coach. The demand for the shot has already been reciprocated and with the canary looking at the opposite goal, little more can be asked of it.

Above all, the day after teaching another magic trick and signing the authorship of the victory over Sevilla. The consulted coaches agree on that: to claim something from a 19-year-old footballer. What can be asked of an apprentice theoretician who, in reality, has acquired the category of decisive player in a whole Barça team in his second season in the elite? “The header?” Víctor wonders in search of a deficiency.

“If at the age of 19 he reaches this excellence, he only lacks regularity in excellence”, points out Lluís Carreras under the following thesis: Messi was the best in the world for his talent; if he is the best in history it is because he was the best for a long time in a sustained way.

There is, however, no complaint about Pedri’s performance, to which he is already compared, in the Blaugrana perspective, with bigger names like Messi and Iniesta. “I’m not surprised,” says Pep Mel, the coach who pushed him to the top by promoting his debut in the Second Division at the age of 16 at Las Palmas. “Pedri is better because his teammates are better,” says Mel, who recently expressed the main virtue of the Tenerife interior on Catalunya Ràdio: “he understands the game.”

And that phrase contains multiple virtues. “He knows when he has to pass the ball, he knows when the play requires a dribble, when a teammate needs the ball in front of him so he doesn’t stop the run…” Mel recited.

That intuitive ability is a gift, which is not taught, but rather possessed and seems to have it in the genetic load, agree Víctor and Carreras, who have met Pedri already formed. “He dominates the two legs, the two profiles and the placement and position of the body is perfect”, adds the former Barça player, with the suspicion that the footballer polished his characteristics “on the street or at school, on bumpy, uneven terrain and sandy, which gives you a different learning”. That is a teaching of the Barça methodology, and Pedri appeared in Sant Joan Despí already trained, with all the courses approved.

But that understanding, while valuable, in a sophisticated operation like Barça’s, is not enough to shine. Víctor Muñoz knows this, with a 15-year career in the First Division, seven at Barça. “He has more innate things than acquired”, he observes, due to “the naturalness” with which he plays, and that apparent little effort that he seems to display in his actions. A misleading effect. “When he has to recover, he recovers; when he has to run, he runs”, observed Víctor, who considers him “the best Barça player right now”.

There is another false appearance: the physical fragility, sustained, perhaps, in the muscular injuries that he chained at the beginning of the season. His absence (only four games from August to December) also weighed on Barça. “He has a privileged physique. He is thin and agile but strong, fast, powerful and resistant and that has nothing to do with being a muscular man in the gym,” explains Carreras.