‘Pedri, Pedri, Pedri!’ Barcelona’s new hero offers familiar moment of magic

First Pedri González put Ivan Rakitic on the floor, next he put Diego Carlos on the floor and then, allowing time to speed up again, he put Yassine Bono on the floor and 76,112 people on their feet. And that’s just those who were in the ground chanting his name, bowing before him. Because if Sevilla fell for the quiet lad who comes to the Camp Nou with his kit in a carrier bag last night, so did everyone else. “Pedri, Pedri, Pedri,” went the cover of Sport, like a kid calling on the Candyman and soon there he was, pretty much everywhere. “Madness,” he said, smiling slightly once it was over.

Only it wasn’t over. Pedri’s goal had defeated Sevilla 1-0 but this was just beginning, both on Sunday and beyond. If Sport named him three times, Barcelona went for 40. He had acted as their “messiah”, El Mundo wrote. “Pedri provides the music,” El Periódico said. “Astonishing,” El País called him, “evocative of Messi and Ronaldinho.” El Mundo Deportivo declared him “wonderful, magisterial, unforgettable.” And while it’s an idea not to use up the superlatives, if only because he’s 19 and you get the feeling you’ll need them again, it was a bit good.

There was a little over quarter of an hour left and it was 0-0 between Barcelona and Sevilla, second place at stake, when Pedri got the ball and pressed pause. It was noisy at the Camp Nou, the second highest crowd of the season – well, the third – and it was tense too, but that didn’t matter: he’s a teenager and he’s timid, his manager says, yet nervousness isn’t his thing, not once he’s out there. So the kid who says he plays like he’s back home in the garden with his brother and who had walked the ball in against Galatasaray in Istanbul a fortnight ago, defenders sliding by and out of