Inter Miami has announced the signing of Sergio Busquets. The Spanish midfielder has played more games (567) with Lionel Messi than any other player. Now, the two will link up in MLS.
By doing the basics impossibly well, Busquets transformed the way his team played. Barcelona already had two exquisite midfielders in Xavi and Andres Iniesta, but it wasn’t until they plugged in Busquets at the base of the triangle that the tiki-taka apparatus began to whirr and glow. They built from the back the way Guardiola dreamed of, pinballing through pressure with short, acute passes at impossible speed.
There was the pullback, where he would show the ball like a matador waving a cape and then roll it back with his sole at the last second, turning to play a simple pass while an opponent sailed past. There was the heel turn, where he would receive the ball on his back foot and chop it behind his ankle to dodge an onrushing tackle. The way Busquets barely seemed to notice the bigger, faster players crashing all around him was key to his whole style. Cool guys don’t look back at explosions.
The most famous part of Busquets’ game was his disguised passes, where he would open his hips to shift the defence one way and then fire an unexpected pass through a crack in the lines. That was his first coach’s favourite trick as a player, too. “I had to lead the line of five astray — move it about, shake it up, introduce disorder, trick it into thinking that I was about to go wide again,” Guardiola explained, “and then — boom! — split them with an inside pass to one of the strikers.
Over the years, that intricate Barcelona unravelled. Xavi and Iniesta left. The balance of power shifted to the forward line, encouraging the team to play faster. When Xavi came back to coach, his
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