Sergio Busquets has always been a player who divides. That’s not going to change when Spain try to evade the patent threat of their hostile Group E rivals at the World Cup in Qatar, though his style isn’t just “divide and conquer.”
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What has made him first amongst equals is that when he has the ball, he’ll split opposition lines, get rival defenders going one way and rival midfielders the other. His very existence on the football pitch is predicated on fracturing organised solidity into chaotic particles. However, when he first emerged at Barcelona, the division was of a different kind.
Those who assessed the progress of academy kids thought he was slender, slow and surplus to requirements; Pep Guardiola, meanwhile, thought Busquets was football’s version of splitting the atom, a talent of such explosiveness that he might prove to be kryptonite to all other super-teams. Guardiola’s view prevailed, but only once the lanky, languid “pivote” had already been marked down for “should be loaned out.”
When his first World Cup arrived, Busquets’ presence and playing style divided fans, media and, to an extent, the 2010 champions-elect squad themselves while they were still on the rocky part of their road to ultimate victory over Holland in the final.
Vicente del Bosque wanted to use a “double pivot” system in midfield (Busquets plus Xabi Alonso), which he believed made Spain more solid defensively. (You might claim Del Bosque was on to something given that Spain won each of the last four matches of that tournament 1-0.) Xavi, Iniesta and Busquets, to be fair, thought that two organising, pivotal central midfielders was one too many. With Barcelona, they’d just won the treble as a midfield trio — Xavi on the right, Busquets in the middle, Iniesta on the left.
Busquets, universally known as “Busi,” performed in that lonely position of alternating between being the last guard before the defence was breached, if Barcelona lost the ball, but also the cerebral recycler of poor possession into killer possession. He was as smart, cynical and effective in defence protection as he was inventive, visionary and sixth-sensed in attacking creativity. There’s not another position like it in football.
This wasn’t the extent of the praise Busquets gets from his national team manager. When I recently interviewed Luis Enrique he told me, only half-joking, “I’d like him to play for four more World Cups!” Nor is this the first time a coach of La Roja has gone out to bat for “Busi.”
Back in 2010, in the eye of the storm after defeat to Switzerland, when debate back home utterly raged and Busquets felt unfairly singled out, Del Bosque, himself an imperious and multi-trophy winner in Real Madrid‘s midfield, spoke up.
“Look, if I could somehow come back as an active player right now, it would be Busquets I’d want to resemble,” he said. “He literally does everything. He’s continually at the disposition of the entire team, he’s always helping out the nearest guy to him, he gives everything defensively and he’s superb at re-starting the play when we get the ball back. When he’s on form Spain’s football is much more fluid.”
– Group E preview: Can Spain get past Germany, Japan, Costa Rica?
Of the World Cup-winning squad from 2010, there are still 11 players who are active in professional football, but only Busquets who’s still playing for his country. And the haters better restrain their bile from here, too, because if he’s fit, Busquets is a guaranteed starter against Costa Rica next Wednesday.
The matches against Germany and Japan, irrespective of his form, might be quite different stories — both of them present tests that might be beyond Spain’s control to “make” them develop at the tempo and with the control that Luis Enrique desires.
