It was July 2, 2020, and if you know anything about that year, you know it was freakish, to say the least, in football terms – thanks to, of course, the coronavirus pandemic.So it was the 2nd of July, and the year being what it is, a Premier League match was being played.It was no ordinary matchday because just a day earlier, Liverpool had won the title they had been waiting for three decades; they won it absolutely deservedly. They had a 30-point lead over the rest of the league and looked unstoppable.And then Klopp and his boys, so hungover, without pressure and uncertainty, arrived at the feet of the empty Etihad and Pep Guardiola. Man City had a motive to spoil their celebration, even in that bizarre period.The match was a proper exhibition if you ask the visiting team. It wasn’t the first time they suffered in Manchester, but it was the first and only time that it didn’t hurt. It was 4-0 at the end, but the game is not important, as much as one of its players.And the then and current experiences of our protagonists.##NAJAVA_MECA_8222319##The Internet remembers everything – we know that. It also remembers your stupid Facebook posts from 2009, and we all live every day with the risk that someone will extract some of our stupid posts, tweets, and photos and embarrass us when they confront us with how stupid we really were.Here’s a small consolation: even if that happens to us, even if we become the entertainment of the known and the unknown for a day, at least we will never be as stupid as the people – primarily Manchester City fans – who tweeted sometime around 9 PM on the evening of July 2, 2020.What, let’s get to the point, happened? The day after Rodrigo Hernández Cascante was named the best player of the European Championship 2024, someone dug up the reactions to the announcement of the Man City starting for the match against the new champions of England.It is not a team that would have anything to complain about, neither then nor now: Ederson – Walker, Eric Garcia, Laporte, Mendy – Rodri, Gundogan – De Bruyne, Foden, Gabriel Jesus – Sterling.Unless you’re a social media pundit, armed with a keyboard, lack of shame and your (mostly wrong) opinion.rodri’s 2023/2024 premier league stats;34 matches played8 goals 9 assists92% pass accuracy 241 accurate long balls49 chances created42 successful dribbles201 duels won235 recoveries pic.twitter.com/TVFEo7NSfy— thee_nathan‼️🇪🇸 (@nathan_ie01) May 19, 2024 Let’s see what those commentators, all excellent football connoisseurs, wrote on that 2nd of July.”Gundo and Rodri? They’re going to run us over in the middle, man.””Rodri is not a good enough replacement for Fernandinho”.”Rodrigo – Gundogan (thumbs down)”.”Rodri you suck”.”Rodri and Gundo, for f**k’s sake”.”Rodri and Gundo, oh God, please no”.”Gundogan and Rodri together is sh*t”.”Rodri?! What’s wrong with Pep?”Rodri, Nico and Yamal ensure Spain’s clean sweep in Euro 2024 awardsEnough? Okay, you have already realized that some – not very few, or at least not very quiet – Manchester City fans did not really appreciate Rodri. Well, let half of this (also) be due to Gundogan, although for that reason they should also have their heads checked.The match, let’s repeat once again, ended with four goals in Liverpool’s net (albeit from only six shots on target), and Rodri played all 90 minutes.Rodrigo Hernández Cascante was a factor on July 2, 2024, and he also was this summer. On June 30, he scored the goal that levelled the score equalized against Georgia, and the following evening he played all 120 minutes against the hosts of the European Championship, Germany, in the quarter-finals. He will also receive a yellow card, but no one will blame him.Even without Rodri’s massive contribution in the final, against some of his City teammates, Spain climbed to the roof of Europe again for a record fourth time in history; he will later sing a song about Gibraltar and thus join the long list of footballers who this summer, especially during moments of celebration, made controversial statements or got into trouble because of their songs. It’s not as if they will suffer any consequences for that: England is all kinds, but you can live in it and publicly dislike it and publicly call it names, like when James McClean wears the Spain jersey, and kudos to them for that.Ecstatic Morata and Rodri play with fire: ecstatic Spaniards trigger international incidentBut let’s go back to our experts, pundits commentators, let’s go back to what every social media has turned into. If we once naively thought that they would bring freedom of idea and knowledge, that we would enjoy their democracy, we regretted it bitterly: X and Facebook and a good part of the writing below the various texts represent those people who used to torment the main characters in the stadiums, yelling at the players, coaches, referees and the whole world, only now they all got a megaphone and they don’t hesitate to use it.How come they never praise someone? So even if you make a mistake, if you make a mistake in your assessment, if you stood behind someone who in the end did not live up to your expectations, at least you weren’t a proper tool!)There is, of course, the fact that the Rodri of 2020 and the Rodri of 2024 are not the same player – it always takes time to fit into Pep Guardiola’s system, and he arrived in the summer of 2019 after just one season at Atletico Madrid, although he will even so “green” bring the League Cup with that goal against Villa in the final at Wembley, just a few days before they shut us all down and killed football along the way – but it’s far from the fact that the mighty Madrid man even at one point deserved those derogatory assessments.Ballon d’Or race fiercer than everIt is also difficult to see such players on the pitch when we yearn for a no.10 who dribbles through the midfield elegantly or a no.9 who will score electric goals. It is hard to notice such a player in a tournament in which the best footballer, officially and unofficially, is a defensive midfielder, especially one who doesn’t invest much in self-promotion.However, Rodri is the champion of Europe with Spain, the winner of four consecutive titles in the most expensive championship in the world and the owner of the record of 74 games without defeat.In short, City win games and win titles when Rodri plays; when Rodri is hurt, they struggle, cough and hiccup. And the second half of the match against England came to him as an exception that confirmed the rule.Rodri easily survived that first season, and became the best, or at least the most useful player in the world, and now everyone knows it; all the unknowns who put frown emojis whenever they see his name in the starting line-up will also survive.He will leave behind a golden trail and a song about Gibraltar that he sings because he can, because he deserves it. And these others will leave only fear – we all share it, and no one is spared from it, even if none of us who have gathered in this virtual place are so stupid as not to see how good a player Rodri is – that someone will dig up their thoughtless sentences and start laughing at them.##NAJAVA_MECA_8222304##
