On April 2, 2016, Real Madrid beat Barcelona at the Camp Nou by 1-2. That was five years and nine months ago. That day, Daniel Alves played his last Clásico As a Barcelona player, tomorrow he could play it again at the age of 38 after his return to Barcelona.
Many things have changed since then on the Blaugrana side. Especially at Barça, where that day, in addition to Alves, there were only three more players left in the squad who were starters that day. (Piqué, author of the Barcelona goal, Alba and Busquets). In Madrid there are six starting footballers that day for Zidane: Carvajal, Marcelo, Kroos, Casemiro, Modric and Benzemá (who scored).
If we examine the majority of the current Blaugrana squad we will see that at that time a large percentage were teenagers or that they had no idea that one day they would bequeath to Barça. The most extreme case is that of Gavi. The Andalusian midfielder that day He was a boy who had just turned 12 who was in sixth grade in Seville and played in the Betis children. Tomorrow will be a key piece of the game. Pedri was 14 and played for La Laguna Youth. Nor had he entered the grassroots football of UD Las Palmas, the same age as Ansu, who has just entered the Barça cadet where he coincided with Nico, while Álvaro Sanz with the same age played for the Real Zaragoza cadet.
But it is that a great list of Barça players they were teenagers. Iñaki Peña, Dest, Araújo, Mingueza, Eric, Riqui, Frenkie, Dembélé, Ferran Torres, Abde, Jutglà and Arnau Tenas were between 15 and 17 years old.
The most ‘veteran’ among the youngsters were far from thinking that one day they would defend the Barça shirt. Neto had just arrived at Juve from Fiorentina, Memphis was rushing his last year at PSV to go to United, Braithwaite was playing for Tolouse, Luuk was scoring in Eindhoven and the aforementioned Frenkie de Jong went from Willem II to Ajax B.
In addition to the Blaugrana starters that day, Ter Stegen was on the bench (Bravo was the starter) along with the currently injured Sergi Roberto alongside players like Arda, Rafinha or Vermaelen.
All this, the day that Alves played his last Clásico.
