Sid Lowe

I think it's a pity as well because there's been a sense over the last...

essentially since Flick took over, but maybe a little bit, going back a tiny bit beyond that, of Pedri starting to get things right in fitness terms.

And as you say, he's had a career with a lot of injuries.

A lot is always said, and I think rightly so, about that first season, which he played the Olympics and the European Championships, being very young, had, I think, over 70 games that calendar year, and it was just too many.

And inevitably...

There were muscular problems that came with that and a series of them.

But over the last 18 months or so, he seemed to have continuity.

He seemed to be able to avoid most of those.

He's playing a lot of minutes.

He's covering a lot of kilometers.

He's playing in a slightly deeper position, which he's asked to do, in theory at least, a more physical role than the one he had before.

And he was coming through that.

So this injury is a problem.

I think if you look at the game that we covered last Sunday in San Sebastian against Real Sociedad, at the end of it, he was exhausted.

And I just wonder if maybe there would have been a temptation to have not played him the whole game in midweek in the Champions League.

But of course, from Barcelona's point of view away in Prague, it was a vitally, vitally important match.

Well, I think that, and actually it's one of the things that Andy Kohlberg, the president, says.

He talks about the idea that when he took over, despite having been a professional tennis player, there wasn't necessarily a sort of an excitement around him, that the excitement in Spain is around Steve Kerr and around Steve Nash, and the idea that these were people who would kind of help

give the project gravitas, help give the project that, if you like, that sense of a sporting status.

And so I think there's a degree of excitement.