It is no secret that Rodrygo Goes had everything agreed with Barça (he himself has explained it in an interview), but Real Madrid came along and that ended like the conversion of Saint Paul on the road to Damascus, because it is well known that there is no signing for Real Madrid whose story avoids the biblical, the epic and even the supernatural. From children who were born to play for Madrid, to truths revealed in dreams, over the last few years we have seen almost everything. And it must be for this reason that a good part of the fans are no longer disappointed by the lack of performance as much as by the absence of a story, perhaps the new opium of the people.
That was a decision that hurt in Barcelona and in almost any part of the world where a shield with the Creu de Sant Jordi beats, the flag and the blaugrana flag. Maybe not immediately, because Rodrygo’s true worth was yet to be proven and La Masia looked scalded by so many boys who arrived like the next Pelé and left thinking of FP as a plausible alternative. Nor was it an abrasive pain, like that of heartbreak, because being a Barça fan is very similar these days to cooking naked and having a tiny drop of oil splash your chest, right next to your heart.
It didn’t take long for the Santos youth team’s darling to discover what Real Madrid is all about, a club that gives you glory on a Thursday and takes you to the dentist on a Sunday, more concerned with what the player is capable of offering than with his emotional needs. The Santiago Bernabéu, which so often functions as a microwave that melts opponents, also often reveals itself as an incubator with altered resistances where the chick that doesn’t grow is burned. Rodrygo did it, with his pubescent face and a father younger than some of his teammates. He adapted to the embers, grew, endured the weight of Real Madrid’s history and made a place for himself among the merengue idolatry until the arrival of Kylian Mbappé placed him in front of the umpteenth test of fire.
The Brazilian is uncomfortable with the new role that the critics seem to have given him. Not even the club itself, or its coach. And it only took a few headlines, ones that are dedicated to naming triads with the initials of footballers, for Rodrygo to fall into the trap of what almost never matters when the ball starts rolling, of childish games and the complex of the displaced: what the scourge of the crowd, or the merciless scrutiny of the press, could not achieve, a simple acronym has achieved.
This is what Rodrygo Goes seems to be complaining about in recent weeks every time he is asked about his new role in an attack saturated with talent. And he does so not so much out of objective concern, as his place in the starting eleven seems immovable, but rather out of a question of feelings, which is often the prelude to real discomfort. What no one has told the Brazilian is that, had he opted for Barça, perhaps his legend would today be linked to the diminutive, a vice very typical of the Barça universe and which reduces its stars to the opprobrium of the middle name ending in a vowel: take a little break, Rodri Goes, and enjoy.
