Oriol Soldevila arrived late for Barça’s grassroots football and, given what happened in Alicante, he left too soon. Left-footed midfielder, with quality and offensive vocation. He was trained as a winger, he didn’t have to travel far to get to La Masia. Perhaps he was even walking because the ‘scouts’ of the Barça club caught him after checking his progress in the nearby Atlètic San Just and Cornellà.
But the road was already made in his second year as a youth, a category in which he shared two seasons in Juvenil B (2018-19) and Juvenil A (2019-20) with players like Nico González, Ilaix Moriba, Ansu Fati or Alejandro Balde and, especially, with the one who became his best friend in this world of football: Arnau Tenas.
At the Ciutat Esportiva Joan Gamper de Sant Joan Despí lSoldevila eft his mark for his class. He had important minutes, but it was not enough to make the leap to Barça B. Therefore, he bravely tried an adventure in the Birmingham subsidiary between 2020 and 2022. That adventure ended last summer when he decided to accept the offer of the ambitious side of Intercity.
A key player in the Alicante side
Soldevilla will not forget the game last night at the Rico Pérez. Three goals against Barça, a perfect hat-trick with his right leg, with his left leg and with the head. It was not enough for his team to eliminate Xavi Hernandez. But at least it caused an experience that he will never forget. If a ‘hat-trick’ of Mbappe in the final of a World Cup was not enough for him to win the title, he is not going to complain either.
Culé by birth, visiting the Camp Nou as a child by the hand of his grandfather, a Barça member like his entire family, at Intercity-Barça he was surrounded by all his family, as if they sensed that something magical could happen. He doesn’t have such a leading role at Intercity to think that something like this could happen. But in the previous days there were clues.
‘Solde’, as they call him and he likes to be called, confessed that he joked with his friends from Barcelona and Barcelona fans who called him. That cliché of “score a hat-trick, but let Barça win” came true. I’m sure he regretted it. He was not that far from completing the perfect story signing the KO of his friend Arnau Tenas of whom he took his shirt, in addition to that of Raphinha and the match ball signed by his teammates. Soldevila will be talked about again. He has earned it. The market needs irruptions like this.
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