RODRI
HERn A nDEZA
gree with it or not, professional players
today have ‘an image’. Those inverted
commas are important, and come with
an assist from the Daily Mail. Players are
overpaid prima donnas who date pop
stars and are serial philanderers. They provide
heavily-tattooed proof of everything that’s
wrong with society, which makes them fair
game for the Paparazzi whenever they darken
the door of a Poundland or Greggs.
So, when a professional footballer does not
fit the Middle England stereotype, it becomes
a story. A quick Google of Manchester City new
boy Rodri’s name elicits the following factoids:
he has no tattoos, no social media accounts,
and loves studying so much there’s almost no
chance of him remaining in football beyond
his playing days.
That’s right, the most important things you
can know about City’s club-record €70 million
signing, the one player Pep Guardiola wanted
above all others, were that he’s never had any
ink done, eschews digital echo chambers, and
thinks learning stuff is good.
Forget that in buying the 23-year-old former
Villarreal and Atletico Madrid midfielder, Pep
has acquired the most promising player in his
position in the world, an heir to 34-year-old
Fernandinho as the linchpin of City’s midfield,
not to mention Sergio Busquets for the Spanish
national team.
Forget, too, that Rodri has all the attributes to
be the modern upgrade on Guardiola himself –
a highly technical recycler of possession who
can win the ball back and play it simply.
And forget this is the perfect under-the-radar
Pep player, who might just have improved the
perfect team. Yes, really.Rodrigo Hernandez Cascante has always loved
football, although probably not in the way you
would expect.
Born into a family of Atletico Madrid fans in
Majadahonda, a satellite city to the north-west
of the Spanish capital, Rodri’s childhood hero
was not future manager Diego Simeone or the
club’s legendary forward Kiko, but Zinedine
Zidane of crosstown rivals Real. He even owned
a Madrid top with Zizou’s name and number
on the back.
Playing out on the streets and with local club
Rayo Majadahonda, Rodri quickly realised that
what set him apart from his peers wasn’t the
outrageous once-in-a-generation skill which
set Zidane apart from nearly every other player
in history, but an innate ability to understand
and interpret the game.
“I was more interested in understanding
football than actually playing it,” he recalled.
“This sport, and how it works, has fascinated
me since I was a kid. I talked about it for so
long that my family got sick of me. I could see
a player thinking about doing something on
the pitch and work out what they’d do. I knew
that if I could understand the game, I would
have a huge advantage over my opponents,
because at that age there aren’t too many
tactical concepts.”
Crucially, Rodri had the skill to back up the
intuition. One Saturday morning in late 2007,