After the win against Real Sociedad, Barcelona intended to continue on that path. Ronald Koeman once again sent the team with multiple 10s on the pitch. Coutinho, Pedri, Griezmann, and Messi all started. The Valencia side hasn’t shown its best form lately, and they are struggling this season in the league. However, despite the circumstances, Koeman’s team couldn’t win the game and dropped precious points again. It was a disappointing performance overall, but there were a few decent individual performances, one of them was the young Pedri’s. Let’s see how he did!
He had a really good performance last time, and he continued to do so against Valencia. He was quite active in the first half, He helped much more in the attacking than his “partner” Coutinho. He covered a lot of space and tried to help in the defense too. Besides his usual fantastic and intelligent game, he also retrieved lots of balls. His interceptions were really useful too. He was a complete midfielder, helped in attack and defend, and he did that very successfully. Despite his age and time at the club, sometimes he plays like a mature 30 years old and understands Messi and his movements. He didn’t have any outstanding weakness, the only thing I noticed was his a few possession loss, but nothing else really.
He has a place to improve but he’s already a fantastic player with a very big future ahead. I think it’s safe to say that Pedri should start ahead of Coutinho, and Riqui Puig should start alongside him. This young Spanish guy would easily outplay some so-called world-class midfielders, with these kinds of performances.
It’s actually amazing to think about how good he can be under a coach who can manage this team in the right way.
Statistics (Sofascore)
- 86 minutes played
- accurate passes – 86.7%
- 2 key passes
- 3 long balls
- 3 dribbles
- 3 tackles
- 7 ground duels won
- 1 interception
- 15 possession lost
Rating: 9/10
