SERGIO BUSQUETS...

The Eyes of Sergio Busquets…

Hangover eyes, bleary;

A gaze unreadable,

Like a priest’s during Confession.

Seemingly weary,

Lean, infallible,

Comfortable in possession.

Hypnotic eyes, shrewd;

A passing craftsman,

Like an artisan with great creativity.

Intelligent, astute,

Tall, a helmsman,

Schooled in reliability.

Hawk’s eyes, intuitive;

An unhurried architect,

Like an artist with an innovative mind.

Feisty, aggressive,

Slim, circumspect,

Simply one of a kind…

Pete Ray

June, 2016

I was privileged to see Sergio Busquets play for Barcelona v Malaga in 2013 and then again at Manchester City in 2015. 

He has an uncanny and mesmerising ability to draw in opponents, then escape their attentions by turning from them and distributing the ball to a colleague most of the time. Maybe it’s his half-open eyes which bewitch opponents…

He fouls up convention. He is like a defence lawyer finding loopholes in a prosecuting counsel’s evidence. He will fall under a slight challenge, of course, writhe on the ground like he has been wounded in a First World War trench when a stray boot touches a sock but he can also be adept at dishing out some unflinchingly cynical challenges of his own, without so much as a blink from his gazing eyes…  

He can squander possession, he has only scored a dozen goals for Barca, he destructs, he is a hatchet-wielder, he gets in the damned way. 

He doesn’t bother to sprint but rather lopes in a languid fashion, moving rather like the stick-insect a zookeeper once shoved down the front of my t-shirt at Newquay Zoo in Cornwall, England.

And best of all, he involves himself in bouts of short passing with team-mates and despite the fact that he is supposed to be marked by opposition team-players, one invariably notices that attention elsewhere frees 5 metres of space around him and that is all it needs to feed the wands of Messi or Iniesta…

Brilliant… 

Those eyes see it all.