Alone Nico Melamed needed seven minutes to lead the way to victory, and the winter championship, against Castellón. And not much more time has it taken to gwin the hearts of a Espanyol who has found in this young player not only the new pearl of the quarry but also a different idol project. Creative, decisive on the pitch, stylish off it too, with highlights that evoke the time of his birth, the first two thousand, and a shirt inside the pants typical of classic football.
With Nico on the lawn the impression is that things are going to happen. And what if it is. His early goal this past Sunday was not a mirage. The same had happened to him the day of his very debut in Second, against Sabadell, when he spent 13 minutes scoring after his appearance from the bench, or more recently in Cartagena, when there were only eight minutes it took to see the door and another five to provide assistance to Raúl de Tomás. 19 was on the grass against Zaragoza when he gave a goal pass to Sergi Darder. The stat could have been wildly increased with the goal he recently scored in Las Palmas, which was invalidated for a previous offside by Raúl de Tomás.
It's no wonder his stats, with three goals and two assists in just 482 minutes disputed, are practically insurmountable– Deliver or score a target every 96 minutes. But it is that Melamed contributes much more. The unpredictable. Innate football. The Angel. A profile that helps the team and baffles its rivals, as in the 2-0 against Castellón, in which he does not touch the ball but does participate actively by dragging them and allowing Javi Puado to finish almost unopposed.
“Nico has a privileged head, very good physical condition, technically he is very good and has a goal. But the most important thing is that it is very responsible, committed, family-friendly“, explained in an interview with AS the then coach of Espanyol Juvenil A, Moisés Hurtado, in the summer of 2019. And he nailed it. As in his final sentence: “He will go where he wants to go. And he wants to go as high as possible“.