Before the European Championship quarter-final against Germany: This is Spain’s supercomputer

On Wednesday, Spain’s striker Joselu sat in front of the media in Donaueschingen, and what remained of his press conference was a declaration of war on his former team-mate Toni Kroos. They wanted to send him into retirement, said Joselu. It was a little lost on how kindly he had previously spoken about Kroos (“it was an honour to have played with him”). Even more so, the fact that he interrupted a journalist who had begun to praise Rodri as the most important player in the Spanish national team before the European Championship quarter-final against Germany (Friday, 6 p.m./ARD). But the reporter didn’t even get that far. Because as soon as he had said that “Rodri is perhaps the most outstanding player…”, Joselu resolutely completed the sentence with: “… in the world!”

One can perhaps argue about this superlative; who currently tops the ranking of the most outstanding players is also a matter of taste. What is undisputed is that Rodrigo Hernández, 28, or Rodri for short, has developed into one of the most influential figures in contemporary football in recent years. At Premier League serial champions Manchester City, who paid the agreed transfer fee of 70 million euros to Atlético Madrid in 2019. At City, that is, under former Bayern coach Pep Guardiola, whom Rodri has just called a “genius” again, and who was himself a “number six” like Rodri during his playing days, albeit of a different kind.

In his youth he was considered too small – a long time ago

Both are or were extremely confident on the ball. If the relevant statistics had been available in Guardiola’s time, he would have been found to have a similarly high passing accuracy as Rodri at the European Championships: 93.5 percent with 259 passes in three games. The difference is due to their physique. Guardiola was a rather scrawny footballer, Rodri is the opposite. Or more precisely: in the meantime the opposite of that, because even if it is hard to imagine today: Rodri was considered too small for football for a long time.

The Madrilenian-born player’s favorite club, Atlético Madrid, dropped him in the youth ranks. Rodri therefore fled to Villarreal FC, where he worked his way up to the first team (and studied at university on the side). He did so well in Villarreal that Atlético brought him back in the summer of 2018. He had long since grown to 1.91 meters without having lost an iota of footballing class. Atlético’s coach Diego Simeone challenged him with a warning: “I know what you have inside you and that’s why I’m going to get on your nerves,” he warned Rodri when he started work. Rodri played as part of a double six at Atlético, absorbed Simeone’s competitive spirit – and was poached by Manchester City.

At City, Rodri learned new routines, as Guardiola prefers to play with a single six. It was difficult for him at first. In his first Premier League season, Rodri was clearly in the shadow of the Brazilian Fernandinho. And even in the summer of 2021, when City reached the Champions League final (and lost to Thomas Tuchel’s Chelsea FC thanks to a goal by Kai Havertz), he was not yet established. Rodri’s starting eleven appearance in the Porto final was not even remotely up for debate. After that, however, Rodri improved his anticipation skills to such an extent that Guardiola put the baton in his hand. “He is the future,” they whispered to each other in the coaching staff, wrote recently The countryAnd he was: In the Champions League final in Istanbul, which City won against Inter Milan in 2023, Rodri was not only a regular, he also scored the winning goal to make it 1-0. As if it was a matter of fulfilling one of Guardiola’s orders on the big stage. Because Guardiola had repeatedly asked Rodri to look for goals.

The goal against Inter was similar in style to the important goal that Rodri scored at the current European Championship. The goal that equalised against Georgia in the round of 16 was also a well-judged shot, in this case from the edge of the penalty area. It was a game in which he proved himself to be a coach on the field. When Spain were in danger of succumbing to desperate haste after Georgia took the lead, he stepped on the ball and signalled with words and hands: calm down now. Don’t rush anything. Don’t lose your style. In the end, Spain won 4-1 – and accepted the quarter-final invitation from the European Championship hosts in Stuttgart. “My virtue has always been to understand football,” Rodri once said. “He is the perfect computer,” said his national coach Luis de la Fuente.

Rodri avoids social networks and the usual professional pranks

Rodri feeds his hard drive with studies of games that were not entirely successful. Curiously, his screen time hardly goes beyond the processing of football matches. He avoids social networks completely because he prefers personal conversations (and does not want to know what an anonymous person from the US West Coast has to tell him). Before leaving for the game in Stuttgart, he said in an interview with the Spanish radio station “Cope” that he now even finds it difficult to answer WhatsApp messages from family members.

In general, he seems to be out of touch with the times. The way he tucks his jersey into his high-rise trousers and pulls his socks up below his knee is reminiscent of footballers from the 1950s. His body is free of the tattoos that have long been obligatory. He is also unfamiliar with other professional mischief. He accepts the teasing of his colleagues, who tease him because he dresses too classically and sportily and not as avant-garde as them, without batting an eyelid.

This is also a symptom of the self-confidence that Rodri exudes with every pore on the pitch. His role, he once explained, is to be “the safe player”, with and without the ball, and especially when a game becomes complicated. That could happen against Germany, at least in certain phases. But Rodri’s fundamental trust in his own team has grown with every minute of the European Championship, and it was already great beforehand.

Rodri said in Donaueschingen that he was already convinced that the team would do well at the European Championships after the friendly matches in March, when Spain shone against Brazil. Spain played well at the European Championships, but that is not enough for Rodri. “Now that the decisive games are coming, it is about taking a step forward,” he said. He said it in the plural: the decisive games. He is certain that Spain’s European Championship journey will not end in Stuttgart.