“He would have continued on the field, running for the team.” In Pedri's words after the game with Real, downplaying the goal he saved by playing that still fragile physique, made of adolescent rubber, which perhaps even helped him on impact, all of Barcelona's fans are recognized. Tired as he is of the whims of a dressing room to which the titles gave all the power, but stripped as it should be due to its continuous failures, especially the Europeans, Pedri's humble image is on which Barça must rebuild.
In football, there are cases in which events overwhelm the forecasts. Pedri is one of them. The canary was not even supposed to start the season in the first team. Coming from Las Palmas, where Ramon Planes had tied him, with boldness and anticipation in the face of other clubs' doubts, Pedri began training in mid-August in Barcelona while the first team flew to Lisbon to hit rock bottom against Bayern (2-8 ). There, in addition to making friends with Trincao, he has already begun to attract the attention of the technicians with whom he had stayed, impressed by their understanding of the game.
Coincidentally or not, two stars lined up for Pedri to have been a full-fledged player in the first team this season. First, the impact that Koeman had on seeing him in the first training sessions and preseason games against Nàstic and Girona. Second, the serious interest of top-level teams like Bayern, who joined others like Milan in lamenting for not having captured the canary earlier. The player's agents started that Barça gave him the number 16 of the first team so that the player could see that there was a real bet on him. And time, and his football, have only confirmed them.
It is very difficult to ask a 18-year-old boy who, logically, has had a blackout in important games. And yet every day he does something new. Against the Real it was not only his quality in the occupation of spaces and in making decisions, that game with two touches. Also his arrival (he almost scored a header), his understanding with Messi; and that almost heroic gesture saving a sung goal from Isak with a mixture of physical waste to arrive on time, intuition to know that Mingueza could fail, and courage, to throw everything knowing that his body would burst against the wood. And the most incredible of all. At 18 years old, Pedri is not heavy with that shirt that for others is lead. Surely, seeing them all your life in the rock of Tenerife-Tegueste, which your grandfather founded, has helped.