In the summer of 2018, in the middle of the preseason, one of so many, A kid, another of many, from Tenerife joined the grassroots football chain in Las Palmas. Curiously, it never woke up enough flow among the heads of the lower teams of the most representative club on the island of Teide, a historical error that time has been relentlessly judging. And that he changed island with in full adolescence.
Las Palmas signed Pedro González López still in cadet age, but his talent with the ball at his feet and a head more than well furnished were worth a place in youth category, where by age it should be when it finally landed in Gran Canaria. He started in youth B in Las Palmas but his football was crying out for a place A, where he was quickly the best. Two years later, and with a brilliant history behind him, he happens to be one of the most important footballers of FC Barcelona with Ronald Koeman at the helm.
A season later Pedri ate the Second Division with football bites to the delight of Tasio Gil, Core T. B., Tegueste's kid's second coach in his first year at Las Palmas, in the first youth team, and also a powerful writer in the making. “He is an incredible footballer: at Barça he is doing the same thing he did when he played with us or in the first team in Las Palmas”, says of his not so old ward. “It is not only that he is a great player or the class he has, which is evident, but the decision-making that he has when he is not even of legal age. He has a privileged head,” he insists.
Pedri, a player with indelible marks, also left a special mark on the soul and heart of Tasio Gil. So much so that, in his second book, A collection of poems entitled El trasiego de la memoria (IG: @tasiogilcoretb), which comes to light this Friday also under the protection of the Gran Canaria publishing house CanariaseBook, dedicates a poem of the same name to the footballer that today dazzles half the world with the Barça shirt.
AS newspaper
There is a child who was born in Tegueste
with a ball sticking to the feet.
That he has sixteen pa ’seventeen,
but it amazes you by its maturity.
His father has a guachinche.
Grilled cheese, gofio and bug.
The broken knees of the piche.
Any place was a field.
And in La Laguna it began to shine
and to leave rivals in their wake.
As skiing leaves them behind,
dribbles with the two, a ball.
Messi's Barça signed him
without having debuted at UD.
Training Pedri, an honor
that I will never forget.
Rhyming in honor of his game, pure poetry in motion, Pedri does have someone to write to him. Tasio Gil, poet and coach, knows what he is talking about. And is that soccer, written and read, can also be a beautiful sport.
