Pedri and his pineapple at the bottom of the sea

The first anniversary of that moment, terrible in every way, has not even been reached, when a significant part of the fans withdrew their confidence in Pedri and sentenced what had long been sentenced after the first setbacks of such atypical footballers as Xavi Hernández or Andrés Iniesta: that modern football is not a school playground and physicality matters as much or more than technique, instinct or intelligence. Always in the wake of Real Madrid's triumphs (and of its story, which rarely skimps on disturbing conclusions), there were many who were frightened by a future in which Barça would go to the great battles with an infantry that is identified by diminutives to face giants such as Valverde, Camavinga, Bellingham or Tchouameni.

Being afraid of what people will say is part of the Blaugrana DNA, which, in too many situations, allows itself to be dragged into the mire of immediacy out of pure apprehension. Also because of not caring about the nature of the method and insisting on empty formulas that once worked, such as handing over the reins to a legend in the making chosen at random because, as the legend goes, improvising on the ashes of a beautiful memory is usually the straightest path to success. Then the opposite happens, of course, because it almost never is. And it also often happens that those footballers who barely fit into the culture of the interwar period come out bruised along the way, those who always seek a break or unleash vertigo based on purely footballing concepts, never in search of gratuitous applause, which is the homeland of the populist interior.

Pedri, who was suffering from injuries and tepid matches , almost as a filler (the most overwhelmed of all the midfielders due to that simple chaos of always giving the ball to Dembélé and waiting to see what he would do), was given a black legend by which he would despise Catalan culture, eat in sorrow and be seen too often in the chaos of the Barcelona night, a frequent combination when it comes to burying the living. On this occasion, fortunately for a club once again supported by the emotional scaffolding of football, the legend and nightmare of Pedro González ended the same day that Hansi Flick took the reins and returned to the Barça first team some semblance of professionalism, common sense and audacity. “We work much more than before,” warned Pedri at the beginning of September. And the fact is that even in football there are no great mysteries anymore.

The regista , who left the field on Tuesday cheered by his fans and silently admired by all the others, reminds us, in every game, of the importance of the right context and the virtues of simple tools. The Barça number 8 executes incredible actions, naturally giving himself over to his street cat talent, but combining them with others that are just as astonishing for their logic, surprising decisions, in a sport that is sometimes crazy, such as stopping when running is not necessary, passing instead of moving, raising your head and looking far away for what you can't find nearby... We're not talking about the Renaissance, or the countercultural movements of the 60s, but there must be something revolutionary about persistence in common sense and that simple aesthetic so suitable for all audiences, very much in the style of SpongeBob. Because if anyone can live inside a pineapple in these times of long faces and gratuitous aggression, also in football, it must be Pedri: the new antihero of cartoons.