Pedro González López, Pedri, has become the great sensation of Barça’s start to the season. The Canarian midfielder repeated his title against Juventus in Turin after being the main novelty for Barça in last Saturday’s classic at the Camp Nou. Ronald Koeman, who always says he doesn’t look at his ID when showing his preferences, kept his bet on the very young footballer in the Champions League. He didn’t care that against Madrid he didn’t take advantage of the open opportunity on the right side. In Italy, the Dutch coach put him on the left, where he forged a promising partnership with Jordi Alba and swayed the Colombian international Juan Cuadrado. He played 90 minutes at a high level at the home of the Scudetto champion, in which he took part 65 times in the Barça game and led the recovery and center-back statistics.
“What a great night. Incredible,” Pedri wrote on the networks, aware that he had taken a key step in a meteoric race that feeds, in turbulent and pandemic times, the excitement of the Catalans. Tegueste consumes stages at a speed similar to that of Ansu Fati, with whom he shares a generation (2002) but not a training stage in La Masia. In fact, just over a year ago, while the Spanish-Guinean made his debut with the first team at just 16, Barça secured the signing of Pedri on the last day of the summer market after a series of circumstances that, in in a way, it recalls the famous story of Leo Messi and the napkin. Football is a game of chance not only on the field but also in the offices, where those who smell of talent and then have the ability to convince the owners of the box usually tend to succeed.
Football, a world of contacts
The key figure in understanding Pedri’s arrival at Barça is Ramon Planes. Last summer, when he was still acting in the shadow of Eric Abidal, the Barça technical secretary received a call from an old fatigue teammate, Rocco Maiorino, whom he knew from the Italian market – he had worked at Milan. Maiorino, then sporting director of Las Palmas, conveyed a very common message in the world of football. More or less, the classic offer of a small club that needs to sell talent to square the salary cap before facing a start to the school year: “Ramon, we have a youngster who may interest you before he starts to excel in Second.” Planes reacted to the insistence of his colleague by going down to the Canary Islands to check that, indeed, it was worth the effort. The agreement was closed for five million fixed and one variable, as long as the footballer was on loan for another year to Las Palmas.
The Canarian club got rid of Pedri only a year after being picked up for his lower categories. Previously, the player had been tested, without success, at Villarreal, Deportivo de La Coruña, Tenerife and Real Madrid. The experience at the white club, three years ago, was marked by a snowstorm that suspended all training football activity in Valdebebas. As a result, Pedri was left without the opportunity to pursue a career at La Fábrica. And still lucky, because if he had ended up signing for Madrid he would have betrayed the family tradition: his grandfather founded the Penya Barcelonista de Tegueste, a small Catalan stronghold that is now presided over by his father. In the end, it all came to an end.
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