One day Pep Guardiola told Mascherano during their Barcelona spell: "When you're a coach, you'll see: you'll want to play with ten midfielders." The Santpedor coach jokes that the secret of his career is having directed Leo Messi first and then Håland. But the truth is that in the three Champions that he has won, with two triplets, he has had a highly ponderable weight in the engine room, the midfield, the organizers. He succeeded in 2009 and 2011 with Busquets, Xavi and Iniesta, a triangle that dominated the world. History repeated itself in Istanbul. He withdrew after half an hour injured De Bruyne but a reconverted Stones and, above all, Rodrigo stayed.
In the summer of 2019, Manchester City paid the termination clause to release Rodrigo Hernández from his contract with Atlético de Madrid. 70 million cost. Since yesterday, the Madrid midfielder is a legend in the blue half of Manchester. Eternal. indelible idol. The first to give glory, the one who opened the way. Author of a historic goal. As is Koeman for Barça. Like Boli for Marseille. Like Juary in Porto. Or Platini for Juventus. Magath in Hamburg. Or Stevie Chalmers for Celtic. A name that is not forgotten, that endures in the imagination.
Rodrigo, like Stones, like Gundogan, De Bruyne or Bernardo Silva, all of them have grown up under Guardiola, a midfielder before a coach. But the pivot, also trained at Villarreal, has gained personality with the ball, he makes it easy on the field and has also struggled to improve his shot, although it is not his virtue, just for the fact of threatening from the front . He scored a great goal with his left foot for Bayern's squad. Yesterday the ball fell to the right on the front and he did not miss it. “I had in mind to hit him hard. But I thought: 'you're going to have one in the game, put it on'. And he has gone inside, ”explained his shot with the inside that entered close to the post.
Normal that for Guardiola it is essential. This year he has played 56 games, only four as a substitute. His coach doesn't take it away even when he plays poorly. “I have been horrible in the first part. Unbecoming of me The coach told me to my face at halftime that he was wrong and he encouraged me, he told me that I am a leader and that he had to change his mentality. I have done that ”, he confessed, with a lot of self-criticism and with his feet on the ground. "I dont believe it. This shows that with work any normal kid like me can get here”, he says. Rodri, the perfect neighbor, and Guardiola are already infinite in Manchester.
