CHENNAI: Real Madrid win titles because that’s what they do. Barcelona can go to the extent of defaulting on their payments but players will move metaphorical mountains to go there. It’s due to their history and heritage. Manchester City are a winning machine... you get the drift, right? These are some of football’s unshakeable maxims.
Similarly, there is another of the sport’s truisms. Rodrigo Hernandez Cascante, more widely known as Rodri, doesn’t lose games. While it may be a quirky statistic and doesn’t tell a lot if you just take that number in isolation, zoom out a bit and you will immediately realise the value of the world’s best defensive mid-fielder.
His La Roja coach, Luis de la Fuente, calls him a ‘computer’ for his innate ability to calculate, restore order from chaos and bring a position of calm. “It’s normal that after the goal, an own goal, there were some nervous minutes,” De la Fuente had said after their 4-1 win over Georgia in the Round of 16.
“But we managed to wrestle control back and the players read the game brilliantly. We were calm at half-time, there was no anxiety and the players knew what was needed. “And then we have Rodri, who is a computer who makes everyone else play. He managed all the emotions and all the moments perfectly, which is a big help for everyone.”
Pep Guardiola, who took him from Atletico before sculpting him into the player he’s today, calls him as ‘the best’ midfielder right now. “It’s difficult to understand how we could have done what we have done in recent years without him,” the Spaniard had remarked about his compatriot earlier this year. Actually, it’s not that hard to understand. Without Rodri, City wouldn’t have racked up all those titles over the last two years.
There was a point last season when the club hit a substantial pocket of air turbulence from the end of September to the first week of December. Losing three league games in two-and-a-half games doesn’t really qualify for a crisis but all of those City losses came without Rodri in the starting line-up. The manner of defeats were limp, reinforcing his importance to the side. In that sense, he’s a bellwether player for both club and country. If Rodri does well, Spain and Man City know they have a floor and a half constructed ceiling. Without him, the foundations can be very rickety. Why?
Most of what they do goes through him. He’s elite in so many ways. Recycle possession? Tick. Take the ball from the centre-backs and move the play forward? Tick. Press resistant? Tick. Leadership? Tick. If Nico Williams and Lacine Yamal are Spain’s twin Ferraris, Rodri is the one who makes it function.
But he carries with him the age-old curse of being a defensive midfielder, folks who do their best work in the shadows. They don’t score as many goals, there is not many goal-saving, last ditch tackles and Hollywood-style quarterback passes are few and far between. It’s why the 28-year-old wouldn’t be in a conversation when the tournament’s best player is about to be selected. If you want to go purely by merit (and not hype), Rodri will be in the reckoning.
Because the ‘best players’ are largely selected from a subset of players who produce something more tangible (goals and assists, for instance) than the quiet stuff, he was actually overlooked when the Premier League drew up its list of nominees for the player of the season in May 2024. Guardiola wasn’t going to have it. “What is important is he knows what we think about the importance and how magnificent, extraordinary player he is,” the City coach had said. “He shouldn’t be worried at all about that.”
The person who ended up winning that particular award in May? Rodri’s club-mate and somebody who will be across the aisle at kick-off, Phil Foden.
Since the start of 2023, the Spaniard has won every competition he has featured in. Premier League, Champions League, Club World Cup, FA Cup, Nations League and the Supercup. He has the chance to add the European Championship to this collection in a little over 44 hours.