Rodri was in Catalonia during those days at the end of July, having attended a wedding on the Costa Brava for someone who turned out to be a key figure in the negotiations.<\/p>\n
The midfielder seized the moment and agreed to meet Deco to hear about Barcelona’s sporting project first hand. They met in a room at one of the famous five-star hotels, and the talks lasted around two and a half hours.<\/p>\n
Deco laid out the project himself: the role Rodri would play, and the importance Flick attaches to him within his ideas and style of play. Barcelona want to make him a key piece in the new project.<\/p>\n
That meeting completely changed the Spain international’s outlook. Real Madrid had been the club that made the most progress in contacts until that point, and Rodri had listened to their offer and held talks, but he had never given his final agreement.<\/p>\n
Feelings shifted sharply after the meeting with Deco. Barcelona came away very satisfied, though they knew a single meeting was not enough to seal a deal of this magnitude.<\/p>\n
From that moment, quieter work began. Deco kept in constant contact with the player, while Flick played a decisive role. The German coach spoke to Rodri personally on several occasions to explain what was expected of him and the role he would fill in the team.<\/p>\n
That detail captures the harmony between Barcelona’s sporting director and the German coach, who are working in complete accord to finalise the signing.<\/p>\n
It is not usual for a coach to contact a player directly. Their traditional rival were also watching Rodri very closely, but Barcelona felt the time had come to throw themselves into the process as fully as possible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rodri was in Catalonia during those days at the end of July, having attended a wedding on the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67881,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[92,331,418,85,82,272,83,1102],"class_list":["post-67880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-madrid","tag-barcelona","tag-deco","tag-features","tag-laliga","tag-madrid","tag-manchester-city","tag-real-madrid","tag-rodri"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67880\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}