Mingueza, 11-0 partial

Ronald Koeman will have a difficult time with Óscar Mingueza. Although the Dutchman has shown in the little more than one hundred days he has been coach of Barça that his pulse is not shaking and, if he believes that Ronald Araújo is ahead, he will put the Uruguayan, The results with the boy from Santa Perpetua de Moguda are final: 0-4 in Kiev, 4-0 at Osasuna and 0-3 in Budapest. An 11-0 run that now looks so normal, but it was not at all clear when Barça lost Piqué at Wanda, his right knee cracked. Without that of Bonanova, Araújo or Lenglet, nobody gave too much for the team and for a youth squad who had not yet debuted with the first team, who had not started with the subsidiary last season and who had barely played 90 official minutes with the second team this course.

The reports that come from the grassroots football in Mingueza speak of a player with a good knowledge of the game and who knows what he is doing. But he is already close to 22 years old and had not made his debut with the first team at this point. Aware of its limitations, it knows how to exploit its conditions. There are doubts about his career in the first team, but for now, only the work of firefighter that he has done in a very delicate moment is already to be appreciated by Koeman and his teammates.

It is difficult to know if Mingueza will settle. Normality says that the recovery of Araújo, of Piqué in a few months, and the possible arrival of Eric García, will leave him with few options. But beyond some specific error in the first three games, he is showing neatness and, above all, a lot of mettle. Something very difficult to have in a team like Barça. Mingueza has seemed like that player who knows that this is his train and wants to go up for civil or criminal. He will go to exam by game. The next, Cádiz. There, by the way, he will meet Bobby Adeyanke, one of the players who reopened La Masia in 2011 (there is a photo of Adeyanke with Guillermo Amor, Carles Puyol, Sandro Rosell and Pep Guardiola). Adeyanke and Mingueza are good friends. But that ends with the opening whistle.