FC Barcelona’s Gavi is the fighting spirit inside Xavi’s possession machine

Back in 1798, Captain John Hunter sent sketches back from Asia to Britain of an animal with a duck’s bill and a mole’s skin, webbed feet and poison spurs. Scottish Scientist Robert Knox, on receiving the drawings, assumed instantly that the creature was a hoax made by people trying to fool the Royal Navy Officer: nothing on God’s Earth could be that bizarre. A year later, George Shaw wrote in Naturalist’s Miscellany, that is was “impossible not to entertain some doubts as to the genuine nature of the animal” and that “there might have been practised some arts of deception in its structure.”

Alas, it turns out that the creature, wasn’t a hoax, it was a platypus. But this freakish design of nature fooled people into thinking that some insane person had fabricated a creature outside of the laws of creation, something that shouldn’t exist, a quirk of nature so dramatic it surely wasn’t permitted in the structures that govern the world.

The same things happens with Gavi. No, he is not a Platypus, as far as I know, but he is a freak of nature. The midfielder takes every step on every pitch in any city or country as though it is both his first and his last: his effort does not wain throughout the game and although sometimes his over-exuberance could be seen as a weakness, it makes him unique in this newly-constructed Barcelona team that aspires to big things.

Gavi getting booked is not a rare occurrence. He missed FC Barcelona’s second leg game against Manchester United after grabbing Bruno Fernandes in the first leg, dragging him around in a move that any WWE Superstar would be proud of; against Real Madrid in the Copa del Rey he also received a card from the referee.

At Camp Nou in the Europa League against Ten Hag’s side, fans could be forgiven for getting annoyed at the player for taking the unnecessary booking and missing the second game, arguably a more difficult tie given Pedri was also unavailable. But without the poison that the Platypus gives you, the Barça team lacks that cutting edge that can see teams over the line.

Against Madrid, he ran the wing as a left-everything: defender, midfielder and attacker, showing his claws in the Bernabéu as though he were Sergio Busquets and had just broken the Clásico appearances record. He tousled with Militão in the centre circle, leaving LaLiga’s most in-form defender on the deck without blinking once and charged back endlessly as Carvajal pushed to find Madrid’s equaliser in the game.

The 18-year-old has 59 fouls in 27 games so far this season and this record won’t stop climbing, not least because Xavi’s possession machine needs the poison that the Golden Boy 2022 brings.