Former Newcastle United and Colombia hero Faustino Asprilla gave his thoughts on Pedri and Lamine Yamal\u2019s Ballon d\u2019Or chances after his former team\u2019s Champions League defeat to Barcelona.<\/p>\n
Faustino Asprilla returned to St. James\u2019 Park, the stadium where he once stunned Bar\u00e7a with a Champions League hat-trick in 1997. This time he watched Bar\u00e7a defeat Newcastle 2-1 and, instead of celebrating with the home crowd, he found himself impressed by Hansi Flick\u2019s team, especially Pedri Gonz\u00e1lez.<\/p>\n
Speaking on Catalunya R\u00e0dio, the former Colombian striker praised Pedri\u2019s tireless effort and intelligence without the ball, describing his display as \u201cextraordinary\u201d and \u201clike a masterclass.\u201d Asprilla admitted he had never seen Pedri play live before and was struck by the way he moved and controlled the game.<\/p>\n
When asked about the Ballon d\u2019Or, Asprilla named Pedri, Lamine Yamal, and Kylian Mbapp\u00e9 among his top three candidates. He highlighted Yamal\u2019s extraordinary skill at such a young age, even calling him the natural successor to Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. In his view, Barcelona\u2019s attack would have been even stronger against Newcastle if Yamal had been available.<\/p>\n
In his storied career, Asprilla was known primarily for his two stints at Parma with Newcastle Sandwiched in between, as well as his exploits for Colombia, scoring 20 goals for his home country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Newcastle United and Colombia hero Faustino Asprilla gave his thoughts on Pedri and Lamine Yamal\u2019s Ballon d\u2019Or…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":241078,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[4444,221,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-241077","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-soccer","8":"tag-barcelona-news","9":"tag-soccer","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115235826493459067","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/241078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}