Sergio Busquets: the unique talent who changed Barcelona and the game

Timing was always Sergio Busquets’ greatest gift, and now he has decided it is time to go. “It wasn’t an easy decision but the moment has come,” the Barcelona captain said. In two months he turns 35; in four days he leads his team into the derby against Espanyol, knowing that a win would make them champions again. The ninth La Liga title of his career will also be his last. At the end of this, his 15th, season he will leave the Camp Nou and “the club of my life”, an era closing with him.

Xavi Hernández, once Busquets’ teammate and now his coach, had wanted him to stay, just as Luis Enrique had wanted him to continue with the national team. But Busquets retired from international football after Qatar and he is departing Barcelona too, destination as yet unknown, after negotiations over a new contract failed to end in agreement. There is no one left in the Spain team who won the World Cup, no one left in Catalonia from the team that won it all, the generation that changed everything, including the game itself.

It has been a long time. Busquets joined Barcelona in 2005 and made his first team debut against Racing Santander in September 2008, 719 games ago. The Racing coach later admitted that he he didn’t know much about him; almost no one did, except Pep Guardiola.

A tall, skinny kid, son of the former goalkeeper Carlos, who once claimed to have burned his hands on a falling iron, diving to “save” it from hitting little Sergio on the head, Busquets played under Guardiola with Barcelona’s B team in Spain’s regionalised tercera division. Few could understand why he had been promoted but soon he was a treble winner, a season that started at Santa Eulalia ending with the European Cup final in Rome. Just over a year after that,