On September 19, 2010, at the Vicente Calderón, a stadium that no longer exists, the celebration was seen for the first time. Gerard Piqué (Barcelona, 1987) scored the 1-2 and then crossed both arms while stretching the index and middle fingers of his hands. The symbol of victory? No. It was two deuces. And that gesture was a special dedication. For... Shakira. Both had been born on February 2 and it had not been three months since they had just started a relationship at the World Cup in South Africa.
On February 24, 2022, in Naples, the Barcelona defender made the gesture for the last time. He scored 1-3 and repeated the celebration. Barely a second because his teammates Araújo and Busquets immediately hugged him.
Extraordinary footballer with his 194 centimeters, he has been a member of the best Barça in history (606 games, with 30 titles, including two trebles) and was part of the golden generation of the Spanish team, with which he won the 2010 World Cup and the 2012 European Championship, in addition to being a scourge of Real Madrid since he scored the sixth goal of the 2-6 in 2009 (in 2015 he got angry with Munir for not passing the ball to him in what could have been another historic 0-5), and of Espanyol “from Cornellà”, as he baptized it after his fans took out a macho banner that read “Shakira belongs to everyone”.
But the field was too small for Piqué, who has always wanted to be president of Barça more than coach. Active on social networks, he has used them to call a journalist a "titella" (puppet) or to publicize his salary with a bank statement.
Thanks to his contacts and friendship with Mikitani, Rakuten has sponsored Barça for 5 years. With Kosmos, his company, he changed the format of the Davis Cup tennis tournament, Andorra has just been promoted to Second Division, he even invented a balloon World Cup, produced a documentary on Griezmann and acquired the television rights for Messi's first year in France.
More controversial was his intermediation to take the Spanish Super Cup to Saudi Arabia. In the leaked audios of his conversations with the president of the Spanish Federation, he spoke of "sticks" as synonyms for millions. Those businesses have already caused the joke of some field. “Call Rubiales, Piqué, call Rubiales”, they sang to him in San Sebastián when he protested to the referee. For him, accustomed to hostile environments, all this is heavenly music.
