When Manchester City and Spain have a fit Rodri in the team, the biggest difference his team-mates notice isn’t actually protection without the ball. It’s supreme confidence with it.
Everybody knows that you can trust Rodri with a pass no matter where on the pitch, with everything flowing from there. If he is playing, the goalkeeper can give it to him in between the centre-halves, and it’s the assured start of a move forward rather than the risk of a counter-attack. If he’s not there, players will often go wide, or long, and the entire flow of the team is different.
It’s what Spain feared when Rodri went off injured in the Euro 2024 final against England and then again for Man City just weeks later. A tension spread in the executive boxes, but partly because of that fear itself. Spanish football’s senior stakeholders were all present, and some were immediately expressing their dismay.
Such fatalism actually irked others, especially those from closer to the Basque country. They said it was like some had never seen Rodri’s replacement play, and an argument almost broke out.
England, and everyone else, soon had a clear idea of Martin Zubimendi. He took on Rodri’s role effortlessly. Zubimendi kept Spain moving in the same smooth way, to win the final and also move his own career onto a new level.
After that, everyone wanted him. Liverpool made their move in the weeks after that 2-1 victory. Arsenal eventually got him a year later, although that after continued interest from both Real Madrid and even Manchester City. The Abu Dhabi-owned club had already long earmarked Zubimendi as a potential successor to Rodri, with that only sharpened after the captain’s long-term ACL injury.
Now, the two are likely to face each other at Arsenal on Sunday, with the younger midfielder no longer seen as the understudy. Zubimendi will instead be expected to again prove he’s as good as Rodri, if not now better. That’s some challenge, given that the City midfielder was the master before his injury.
Zubimendi has already occupied Rodri’s place in the Spanish team, to the point that part of the latter’s recovery is going to be fighting to reclaim it before the World Cup. Whoever dominates that same area of the pitch at the Emirates could go a long way to deciding the game, and maybe, eventually, the destination of the Premier League title.
That’s how good both are, albeit with some differences. Both will no doubt have sized up what those are, and where space can be exploited.
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Zubimendi is five-foot-11, but doesn’t yet have Rodri’s physicality. Throughout the City midfielder’s rise to Ballon d’Or winner, he has looked the closest in the Premier League to a prime Roy Keane. Rodri is able to win balls that would otherwise look gone, and that in a manner where he almost seems to bump opposition players off possession. This is what Zubimendi is going to have to get around, and it will be instructive to see how much muscle Arteta puts beside him.
If given the opportunity, both can let fly. Just as Rodri drove in that perfect long-range strike against Everton, Zubimendi offered that exquisitely executed volley against Nottingham Forest. We are talking about the purest technique here, that is a natural translation from their precision in passing. And yet the more speculative nature of the volley may have hinted at another difference, and perhaps an evolution.
Rodri and Sergio Busquets were obvious archetypes for Zubimendi as he developed, but so was Real Sociedad’s B team coach at the time: Xabi Alonso. He had a proper protege relationship with Zubimendi, in which one message was persistently pushed. Alonso implored Zubimendi to add more “verticality” to his game. In other words, the long-range play that Alonso himself excelled at.
Arsenal have already started to see it. Zubimendi will surprise opposition by suddenly shifting from short passes to an arching ball. Noni Madueke has already greatly benefited.
If these are elements that are going to shape Sunday’s game, they also touch on something that might shape how football is played in the long term.
Is anyone else even close to these two? This pivot role is naturally pivotal, with one Arsenal insider describing it as “the ultimate position of trust” in football. The player is responsible for both protecting a team’s key area, and making them move. “The oil.” It has become unique in the modern game, which is why it is so distinctive that so few midfielders are able to perform to that level. One of the reasons that Zubimendi was so sought after is because he’s so far ahead of everyone except Rodri. Arteta absolutely made sure he got him.
Almost everyone else has been forced to compromise. Liverpool have had to refashion Ryan Gravenberch, Alonso has been experimenting at Real Madrid. AC Milan, once the home of Andrea Pirlo, have gone for a 40-year-old Luka Modric alongside the burgeoning Samuele Ricci. Xavi Hernandez even implored Barcelona to sign Zubimendi in 2023.
It’s saying something when the club who are the ultimate proponents of this position are forced to look outside.
Zubimendi, of course, already has that understanding with Barca’s Gavi and Pedri from the national team. Really, how fortunate are Spain to have both Zubimendi and Rodri?
Except, it’s not fortune at all.
One figure who has worked within the Barca structure describes the duo as the “perfect products of the Spanish academy system”. Their short passing and technique were honed by the country’s environment of small-sided games, with the innate football intelligence then deepened by the tactical culture.
As one coach explains, such players are taught body shape movements in the same way that young tennis and golf talents receive high-class individual coaching. What also stands out for team-mates is how effortless Rodri and Zubimendi look in situations where other players might panic. They’re intelligent enough to know what they have to do before it even happens.
Much has already been made of how Zubimendi won regional chess championships as a child. Figures like Arteta call it “adaptive intelligence”. In the Arsenal dressing room, there was awe at one specific Zubimendi pass to Eberechi Eze against Nottingham Forest. No one else saw it but Zubimendi had the vision and skill set to pull it off.
No other country comes close to teaching this like Spain. French academies are seen as focusing too much on winning at all costs; Portuguese too much on the technical side; Italian too much on the tactical. English academies are generally a version of something else that exists in Europe.
Adam Wharton is nevertheless seen as offering a “street interpretation” of the role. He has great instinct and an effortless style, if not quite the almost mechanical perfection of the Spanish players. Similar hope exists about Lazio’s Nicolo Rovella.
There is also a potential different evolution, as everyone talks about a post-Pep Guardiola future and old-fashioned qualities returning. Ruben Amorim is already insistent on a physical runner at Manchester United, which was the main midfield archetype before the Guardiola revolution in 2008. Even if Amorim doesn’t succeed, this may point to part of the future.
There’s still nothing like real control, though. No one offers it like these two.
