Melendo, the last survivor of the Chen Generation

Will be your fifth Christmas since his debut in the first team, on November 20, 2016 in an Alavés-Espanyol (0-1), and surely the one that faces with a higher hierarchy from the midfielder of Vicente Moreno's team. But also, and of that there is no doubt, is that It will be the first that Óscar Melendo, one of the stones on which the leadership of the parakeets in Second is based, will live as the sole survivor of Generation Chen.

This is how the then sports director, Jordi Lardín, baptized the batch of players born in 1997 who excelled, debuted and settled in First Division at the beginning of the 2016-17 season, the happiest with Quique Sánchez Flores. To the point that, in a matter of very few months, between November and February, they all renewed and reinforced their contracts. And three of them ended up leaving more than a good peak in the coffers of the entity, sublimating the always convenient quarry model. Along with Melendo, the Chen Generation was made up of Marc Roca, Aarón Martín and Marc Navarro. The three who left the club are in the elite, and spread across half of Europe.

The first to come out, in the early summer of 2018, was Marc Navarro, whom Watford came to Cornellà to take away in exchange for two million euros. There it continues, after a loan last season at Leganés (where he had to dispute the position with another expert, Roberto Rosales), and with some intermittence nowadays. Alone has played 28 minutes in the Championship, the second English, although after a thigh injury precisely last Saturday he returned to play the final part of the game against Huddersfield, where another right-winger from the blue and white quarry, Gonzalo Avila ‘Pipa’, played the 90 minutes.

Just a few weeks after Navarro, in August 2018 and in full mini-tour of the British Midlands, Aarón Martín left Espanyol and headed for Mainz 05, in exchange for a transfer of nine million that could reach 12 depending on variables. He played 33 games in the Bundesliga in his first season, 22 last, in which his incidence was from more to less, and five has been in the current campaign, three of them as a starter, in addition to another six in which he was not summoned.

AND Roca is the most recent and universal case. For about Nine million won his services on October 4 a Bayern Munich who had persevered to incorporate him since the summer of 2019. He had already participated in two matches in Second Division, although his dismissal ended in expulsion against Mallorca.

In Germany, its incidence is being uneven: only 20 minutes so far in the Bundesliga, 90 minutes in the Cup against a lesser rival and, nevertheless, two titles in the Champions League, against Salzburg (in which he was sent off) and against Lokomotiv Moscow. It is the spearhead of a Chen Generation that exhibits the fruits of the parakeet quarry throughout the continent, with Cornellà and Melendo as a compass.