Joanjo Pallàs proposes an exercise.
Ask:
-Among the Barça players that are left now, which of them could occupy the space that Piqué leaves free?
Immediately, there is a cataract of ideas. As the names come out, we are discarding them.
Lewandowski? He is the benchmark of the current squad, but he has landed at the club at 34 years old.
Dembélé questions diets, just like Piqué. However, he does not have a moral ascendancy over the staff, much less over the parish.
Pedri and Gavi outline an exemplary present and future, although no one visualizes them behaving relaxedly in front of the journalist, “unfolding their lanky twentysomething body on a bed, putting their hands behind their necks on the cushion and smiling like the great seducers do, uninhibited , provoking envy around him” (Pallàs dixit).
(there will be no way to verify it, no journalist will have the opportunity to interview them in a hotel room)
Araújo? It looks more like Puyol. ¿busquets? We do not remember a single sentence. Ter Stegen? It will not be unforgettable. Of Jong? Too intermittent. Ansu Fati? Can anyone imagine him grabbing the microphone to drive the white fans crazy...?
We open the focus. Who rules in Madrid? Benzema, current Ballon d'Or. Does he arouse the anger of the Catalans? Neither fu nor fa. No Madridista does it today. That was a thing of Ramos, Roberto Carlos and Cristiano Ronaldo.
We open the focus more. We transcend LaLiga
What is beyond of? Well, Cristiano Ronaldo himself no longer counts. And does someone at Chelsea, Bayern, Juve...? Forcing the seams, we reach the childishness of Mbappé (the footballer who bursts out laughing when asked to travel by train, not by plane) or even the innocent gestures of Håland. Both are the most popular specimens of the present.
(...)
The debate leads us to a dead end. Well, in the drift of today's most elitist football, there seems to be no room for free spirits like Piqué's.
There is no room for interviews in hotel rooms, or long after-dinner conversations in restaurants. There is no room for populist declarations that pretend to be the flag of a club and flag for the ancestral adversary. There is no room for skinny centrals who make up for their physical deficiencies based on criteria and placement. There is no room for nocturnal fanfare, as nocturnal as treacherous, or office meetings with employees and subordinates.
The speeches of the footballers (Mbappé and his childish giggle apart) are today millimetric, monitored by the agents and those responsible for communication: exemplary press conferences abound whose order of play follows that, a predetermined order.
There is no room for Piqués, because there is only one Piqué and he is already leaving to return when he wishes, he will announce it at his free will, breaking the corset of the rigid and oiled contemporary blocks.
As a player, it no longer fits.
