Rodri and America. It was always meant to be; A unique relationship forged by chance and forged by destiny. Before he kissed the World Cup trophy, showered it with confetti and set off fireworks in the sky over East Rutherford, Connecticut, nearly 100 miles from the site of his victory, as part of an exchange program.
His father wanted him to study in the United States, but he was adamant about his ultimate desire to become a footballer. But his father had other plans and, imagining that American life would change his son’s ambitions, packed him off to a student program in Connecticut. Rodri. Suddenly, Villanueva de la Cañada, a quiet teenager in the Madrid suburb of Con-et-e-Cut, appears in the middle of the forest, as he calls it. “It was like I stepped into a Hollywood movie,” he wrote in the Player’s Tribune. “You know those movies where the kids go camping on a big lake and there are wooden canoes and you’re climbing trees and sleeping in tents and hitting sticks?” Everything felt strange for the true blue Madrid boy.
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One day he invited his friends to play football. They thought it was American football. “No, no, that’s not what I meant by soccer,” he told them. “Oh, saw-ker. No friend, no way,” they said. He had football with him and played alone. Day, night, at the height of summer, in the dead of winter. He did not mind a modified version of football, but remained loyally disaffected with footy at heart. “Genuine fun! I loved it,” he wrote.
He never left home, quickly learning English, with a distinctive Connecticut accent that endeared him to his friends. The same quick perception skills made him indispensable in the teams of two opposing managers, Diego Simeone and Pep Guardiola, Angels and Archangels. But when the World Cup started, he began to feel homesick. “I couldn’t even check the internet, I was in pain,” he said.
But there was a messed up computer in the main office. Every day he asked the counselors for marks. One of them told him that Spain lost to Switzerland in the first round. His heart sank. “I thought they were pulling a prank.” Through the knockouts, the counselors would tell him without asking if Spain had won. He was on a canoeing trip when Spain beat Germany in the semi-finals. “I’ve never felt so far from home, but so close to home, if you know what I mean,” he would say. He begged the counselor to let him watch the finals on the computer. He did, but the internet was shaky and he had to find an invalid stream. “When Iniesta scored, I literally started screaming and I ran out and walked around the pool. The boys thought I was crazy.”
Rodri poses with the Golden Ball award at the end of the World Cup final. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)
Sixteen years later his friends must have understood the meaning of his screams. The most valuable trophy in the world was in his hands. A dream for a Madrid boy.
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It took years to make the route from Connecticut to New Jersey. A year later, he returned home and to his father’s chagrin, his son was still in love with the game. He let him be. “It was almost like a drug,” he once said. A journey from Atlético Madrid’s academy to Villarreal saw him return to Atlético as a senior player. Awaiting him was the first major influence of his career, manager Simone. The Argentine realized that he possessed wonderful technical skills but lacked the nastiness that his team embodied.
“When I was at Villarreal, I was very good with the ball at my feet, but I was still a bit soft. With Diego Simeone, I learned what it means to be a bad guy – to be a bit of an ab***** on the pitch. It was about confusing the other team for 90 minutes. That was another important part.” Simon realizes that he can be a bad guy without making tactical fouls without his opponents noticing his pettiness.
Rodri’s positional sense is so supreme that he is never out of position to commit a nasty foul. The image of a defensive fielder is that of a happy, tough middle man. But not the best of them, from Claude Mekele and Sergio Busquets to N’Golo Kante and Rodri. They have more time and space than anyone else, a preternatural sense of the ball, the paths it will travel. He was ranked 97th in the list of offenders in this World Cup. This is the paradox of Rodri, who won the Ballon d’Or without scoring a single goal or assist, never topping the defensive or attacking metrics. He also ranks 44th in the pass rate table. So what made him the tournament’s Most Valuable Player?
His second, and perhaps his most influential figure in life, is Guardiola, who will say: “He sees the game the way no one else sees it, for its exquisite details, his vision is panoramic.”
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Rodri made Messi play more with his right foot, lethal but not as much as his left foot. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)
When he arrived at City he was a far cry from the midfield figurehead he is now. Guardiola advised: “Don’t move too much, a holding midfielder doesn’t, move enough and only when necessary.” Guardiola was surprised at how quickly he learned and adapted. He increased his passing range, polished his positional awareness and began his ascent to greatness.
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Within a year, he became irreplaceable to the city. Their fate directly depends on its availability and optimal fitness. “People always look at players who score goals, but football is more than that. Rodri controlled every match he played. He controlled the tempo, protected the defence, won possession, started attacks and gave every player around him the confidence to play their football,” praised Guardiola.
In the final, he tied Messi in knots, so much so that he avoided him like a thief. Rodri made him play more with his right foot, lethal but not as much as his left foot. Messi would have found his old friend Sergio Busquets. As a Barcelona cornerstone, he cannot be judged by statistics, defined by his illustrious role. To label him as a defensive midfielder is to turn a blind eye to his attacking output, to call him a tempo-setter is a misnomer. He is a traffic controller, as Luis de la Fuente called him, whose role is not as glamorous as that of a detective or spy, but to control the world around him. He is the axis of the compass that allows Spain to draw a perfect circle, a man whose coverage of vital spaces absorbs half the faith of his opponents. Argentina will readily vouch for the invisible man who made them anonymous.
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He exists perhaps in a state of contradiction, a tempo-setter who is a holding midfielder, a disciple of both Simeone and Guardiola, a conductor who is also a lead singer and a true-blue Madrid boy who speaks “con-et-e-cut” English. Also, the best midfielder in the world, a player whose numbers cannot capture him and whose role defies definition.