Less than a year ago, Gavi played his first World Cup and in eight months he will be playing in a European Championship, after scoring the goal that qualified Spain for the 2024 tournament in Germany. We must not forget that he will only be 19 years old – he turns 20 in August–. And in eleven days, the young footballer will play his ninth classic between Barcelona and Madrid, if nothing goes wrong. And it shouldn’t because at the start of the season, the midfielder has played everything. With Barça’s number 6 and with the national team’s number 9.
For Xavi and Luis de la Fuente, as before with Luis Enrique, the one from Los Palacios, despite his youth, is indisputable. As a Blaugrana he has been in all 11 official matches and with the red shirt he has started in all four qualifying matches for the Euro. Not only because of his good judgment with the ball, his passion, his determination or his pressure, but also. But the key is also his physical resistance. Gavi, who is 1.73 meters tall, is tough as a rock.
On Sunday he will be back on the Montjuïc pitch to welcome Athletic. He made a mistake in Granada at 1-0 at 16 seconds, but he is one of those who learns very quickly. The first match of 23-24 that he misses will be the Champions League against Shakhtar. He will be forced to rest next Wednesday, because he was sent off with two yellow cards in the Porto field and will serve his punishment.
This start to the season, in which he adds 1,123 minutes between his club and the national team, is not a rarity, but rather the norm with the Andalusian interior, which in his two campaigns has not dropped below 47 games.
Since the summer 2021 preseason, Gavi’s first with the first team and in which he convinced Ronald Koeman, the Andalusian has only missed two games. And it was not due to an injury per se but due to illness. Infected with coronavirus, he could not participate in Barça’s trips to Mallorca and Linares in the first days of January 2022.
Since he established himself in the elite, he has never had a muscle tear. A regularity that is not available to everyone. And that has been captured at a time when almost the majority of Barcelona’s starters have gone through the infirmary, he remains healthy, like Ter Stegen or Gündogan.
The only physical misfortune dates back to when he had not yet officially debuted in the first team. The youth player suffered a broken jaw in a crash in a friendly in Salzburg. That did not stop him from continuing training with a protective helmet. Thus, the boy was on the bench in the first two League games (Real Sociedad and Athletic) until Koeman gave him the alternative for the third: August 29, 2021 against Getafe. That’s where it all started. The next game, at 17 years old, he did not hesitate to collide with a mass like Bayern’s German Goretzka. The German, much heavier, was thrown and he earned a yellow.
Gavi, or Pablito, as some call him, does not leave the team even though top midfielders continue to arrive, more experienced than him, such as Gündogan or Romeu. This season he has surpassed 100 games for Blaugrana, the club he signed for as a junior in 2015. He has already played more for Barça than Griezmann and Coutinho, the club’s two most expensive signings. He debuted later than Pedri and Araújo, but he has already faced Madrid more times than the Canarian and the Uruguayan, who are more fragile in fiber.
The Andalusian has 13 games left to equal Iván de la Peña’s 120 appearances – in two stages – as a Blaugrana. The Cantabrian is his representative and has made a bet with him to see if he exceeds ten goals in this campaign. This is how he explained it in an interview with this newspaper. At the moment he has two with Barça (Villarreal and Antwerp) and two with Spain (Cyprus and Norway).
“He has not yet shown it in the elite, but he has always had a lot of arrival. In one year he scored more than 80 goals,” Manuel Vasco, his first coach at La Liara Balompié, in Los Palacios, usually tells anyone who asks.
With Spain, Gavi, champion of the last Nations League and finalist in 2021, is also making progress. He has already equaled the 25 caps (21 times as a starter) of two historical players such as the Barcelona player Joan Segarra, the Great Captain, and the Madrid player Zoco. And he has scored more goals than forwards like Kiko Narváez. Gavi shines like a diamond and is strong like titanium.