{"id":1154351,"date":"2026-08-17T20:59:01","date_gmt":"2026-08-17T20:59:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1154351\/"},"modified":"2026-08-17T20:59:01","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T20:59:01","slug":"how-rodri-defined-a-manchester-city-era-as-one-of-the-premier-leagues-greatest-midfielders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1154351\/","title":{"rendered":"How Rodri defined a Manchester City era as one of the Premier League\u2019s greatest midfielders"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Kevin De Bruyne<\/a> is Manchester City<\/a>\u2019s greatest ever player. Erling Haaland<\/a> will hoover up the club\u2019s goalscoring records; or those he does not already possess, anyway. Bernardo Silva<\/a> made the most appearances of anyone for City in the last four decades, the most under Pep Guardiola<\/a> and felt the manager\u2019s favourite.<\/p>\n

And yet perhaps the Barcelona-bound Rodri <\/a>was the definitive player of Guardiola\u2019s time at the Etihad Stadium. It helped, of course, that he scored the most momentous goal, the one that finally made City champions of Europe. Rodri against Inter in Istanbul<\/a>: few supporters will ever need an explanation of that.<\/p>\n

\"RodriRodri bids farewell to Manchester City after a talismanic spell at the club (PA)<\/p>\n

Rodri was a colossal figure but also a symbolic one. Guardiola\u2019s football stemmed from the midfield and Rodri was the controller supreme, with a pass completion rate forever in the nineties and an ability to win the ball back. He was simultaneously a constructive and destructive presence. He played in Guardiola\u2019s old position; yet he smashed through the glass ceiling for defensive midfielders. <\/p>\n

None had won the Ballon d\u2019Or, arguably, since Josef Masopust in 1962. Rodri did. None had ever won the World Cup\u2019s Golden Ball<\/a>. Rodri did. He arrived at the Etihad Stadium with the suspicion he may have been overpriced, having to adapt from Diego Simeone\u2019s football to Guardiola\u2019s, at the end of a long search for Fernandinho\u2019s successor which had taken in midfielders as different \u2013 from each other as from him \u2013 as Fred and Jorginho.<\/p>\n

\"RodriRodri scored the winning goal in the 2023 Champions League final (Getty)<\/p>\n

It was testament to Guardiola\u2019s coaching that Rodri improved far beyond what seemed possible. There were times, in his early days in City, when he looked slightly cumbersome. By the time he peaked, the stature that made him taller than the quintessential midfielders of Guardiola\u2019s Barcelona was an asset, a sign that the Catalan had adapted to the English game by having more physical players. When City won the Champions League, they were staffed by sizeable figures: a back four comprising defenders who were centre-backs by trade, plus Rodri, plus Haaland. It was a team with the height to satisfy Tony Pulis and the technique Guardiola prized. <\/p>\n

The eventual verdict may be that Guardiola\u2019s City ceased to be a great team on 22 September, 2024: the day Rodri suffered his cruciate ligament injury against Arsenal. A month later, they were sent spiralling into a run of nine defeats in 12. <\/p>\n

\"RodriRodri will leave Manchester City for Barcelona (Reuters)<\/p>\n

When, in Guardiola\u2019s last 20 months, they threatened to revisit past glories, it was when Rodri was able to exert a huge influence. There was the week in September 2025 when they beat Manchester United and Napoli and then drew away at Arsenal; the four-game run in March and April where victories over Arsenal sandwiched ones against Liverpool and Chelsea. In 2024-25, after recovering from his knee injury, he started one game. City beat Juventus 5-2 in it. <\/p>\n

It felt no coincidence. Rodri turned into a talismanic force.<\/a> In his last 75 starts before he faced eight months out, and excluding penalty shootouts, City lost once \u2013 in the 2024 FA Cup final. Across the last three-and-a-bit years before he was ruled out, he began 149 games and City lost just 10 of those. They won the Premier League<\/a> in each of those full seasons and the Champions League once. In two other European campaigns, they were eliminated once by a ridiculously late Real Madrid comeback and once on penalties.<\/p>\n

It is worth noting those three-and-a-but years came immediately after a Champions League final that Rodri spent on the bench. And then, at 25, he took the step forward to become a defensive midfielder to rival any in Premier League history; Roy Keane, Patrick Vieira and N\u2019Golo Kante had company at the summit of the standings. <\/p>\n

\"RodriRodri had an all-round skillset with and without the ball (Getty)<\/p>\n

Perhaps there is something fitting in Rodri leaving in the same summer as Guardiola<\/a>, his greatest creation going with the manager. Certainly it underlines the sense an era has ended, a feeling that was compounded by City\u2019s Community Shield demolition at Arsenal\u2019s hands. <\/p>\n

Financially, City have got an excellent deal from Barcelona: a fee of \u00a365.4m for a 30-year-old who was in the last year of his contract. Yet it will cost far more to replace him and, whether Ayyoub Bouaddi, Enzo Fernandez<\/a> or another, any successor will be a downgrade. City have already paid \u00a3116m for Elliot Anderson<\/a>; part of the challenge for the former Nottingham Forest player is to develop the authority Rodri exuded.<\/p>\n

\"RodriRodri led Spain to World Cup glroy (Getty)<\/p>\n

The World Cup illustrated how good he is, a player capable of elevating an excellent team to another level. Barcelona, fresh from back-to-back La Liga triumphs, may hope he can be the difference-maker in the Champions League. City could look at Rodri\u2019s total of 26 club starts last season and wonder if the World Cup-winning captain would have played often enough this year to enable them to regain the Premier League crown. But it may forever remain the case that City\u2019s finest team, and not merely Guardiola\u2019s best City team, came with Rodri in his prime.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1154352,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[8813],"tags":[17943,748,393,4884,2465,17944,16,15],"class_list":["post-1154351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manchester","tag-bestof","tag-britain","tag-england","tag-great-britain","tag-manchester","tag-topix","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/117112864749538586","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1154351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1154351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1154351\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1154352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1154351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1154351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1154351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}