Does Barcelona miss Pedro Rodriguez? We would say yes! Even though the Spaniard did not have the dream debut season with Chelsea, it was clearly visible that he was being missed at Camp Nou. At Stamford Bridge, the 28-year-old has posed more questions than the answers he came up with but he was the perfect backup at Barcelona, someone who could deputise the famed trident ‘MSN’ with sheer perfection even though that was just for one season.
Barcelona are seemingly in the market for the next Pedro, someone who would not mind languishing on the bench for eternity and once in a while enter the fray late from the bench and change the whole complexion of the game. Pedro did it for one season. While the most devastating trio in world football worked their magic on the pitch week in week out, Pedro got to add another Champions League trophy to his already-impressive resume.
We cannot blame Pedro for putting an end to his Barcelona career last summer. The clock was always going to tick down to the end of the 28-year-old’s Barcelona career as he deserved more than just a ringside seat to the greatest magic show on earth. Even though Pedro was just a perfect BACKUP, he was solely missed last season by Luis Enrique when the Catalan giants needed someone to enter the game late with a good attacking energy.
It’s very hard to convince players to Camp Nou considering the kind of firepower Barcelona have up front. Munir is craving for playing time and a loan spell could well be on the cards. New signing Denis Suarez is well capable of covering Messi or Neymar but not Luis Suarez who is unarguably the best centre-forward in the planet right now.
Players like Gamerio and Vietto have been linked with moves to the Blaugrana but sealing a deal for either of them is an uphill task due to the fact that Barcelona are unable to offer them much time on the pitch.
Barcelona’s answer to missing on a treble last campaign looked like bolstering the squad depth. The Camp Nou side have made brilliant signings like Samuel Umtiti, Lucas Digne and Denis Suarez but there is still one valuable piece missing from the jigsaw i.e. the perfect replacement for Pedro.
If Barcelona fails to find a striker, then Munir will probably be kept as the fourth man, although the crevasse in quality between him and the MSN is as dazzling as it is understandable. Barcelona’s perfect summer looks quite an uphill task, after all, it’s hard to find a player as less ambitious as Pedro who at the age of 28 realised that he was just a backup for too long.
This article was written by Craig Kester.
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