Barcelona: 3 La Masia youngsters to watch out for 2021-22

2. Gavi

At just 16 years of age, Pablo Paez ‘Gavi’ is garnering praises for his outstanding outings in the Barca shirt during pre-season. Gavi joined La Masia in 2015 and since then has been nothing short of a sensation at the famed Barcelona academy. The Blaugrana have been famous for producing midfield geniuses with tremendous imagination. Xavi and Iniesta are the biggest examples of it.

Gavi is an exuberant youngster with incredible vision and remarkable creativity. The 16-year-old is a silky passer of the ball and has the vision to thread perfectly weighted defence splitting balls. Gavi’s rise has been exponential which is evident from his graph at Barcelona. He featured for the Barcelona B team twice and has been training with the senior team in pre-season, also featuring in all three friendlies of the season so far.

Barcelona’s inventive drought in midfield was quenched by Pedri last season. Prior to that, ironically, the Blaugrana struggled to create from the middle of the park which often saw Messi dropping deep to lend support, almost playing as a playmaker and a forward. Gavi’s inventiveness offers hope. While Pedri is already Barcelona’s crown prince, Gavi could soon follow his footsteps of being a playmaker in the side.

Gavi pulls rabbits out of his hat, he can evade opponents and make it look like they never existed and even if they did, he made them disappear through his wizardry. Gavi seems to be destined for greatness, he needs to be carefully incubated and harnessed by the Barcelona management.

Even though he’s likely to spend most of his time with Barca B, his outings has left Koeman wondering whether could the 16-year-old play some part in the first team. In fact, as per a report, the Dutch manager has told Laporta that he likes Gavi over Riqui Puig. His career trajectory would get a nitro boost should he make a senior team appearance this season.