 And now for Gaby out for six to eight months, a massive blow for Barcelona. De La Fuente has changed nine players between the two games, the Star Wars game and the Georgia game. Gaby was one of the two that stayed on the pit that started both. Let's not do the same mistake with Gaby, please. Gaby has fully torn his ACL, partially injured his meniscus and will probably be out for at least six months, probably more. All thanks to him, Luis De La Fuente. The same manager who was partially responsible for Pedri's injury in 2021. They didn't desperately need Pedri in that moment, and De La Fuente absolutely should have rested him. But because of his ignorance and a Spanish footballing law, Barcelona players are suffering tremendously. This season, Gaby has been one of the few consistent players in the entire squad. Lewandowski has been playing terribly, Pedri and Frankie got hurt, and the defense is not defending well at all. But Gaby's been incredible. Still a powerful and passionate player, he has shown much more substantial quality this year. Without Frankie and Pedri, Barcelona needed somebody to stand up and play in those positions consistently, and that was Gaby. So he started and played in almost every single one of Barcelona's matches in the beginning of the 23-24 season. Because of all the injuries, we can't be upset with Chavi for playing Gaby so much because the team desperately needed somebody with experience to play, and that happens to be 19-year-old Gaby. However, there is plenty reason to be upset with the amount of games he played in for the Spanish national team. De La Fuente has proven several times that he refuses to bench people that he thinks is his best starting 11, even in games that don't matter. In this international break, Spain played Cyprus and Georgia. Teams ranked 124th and 76th in the world, respectively. Okay, against Cyprus, they wanted to ensure qualification, so they threw out their best team, including Gaby. That makes sense. I guess I can understand that. However, if you've seen how many matches your players are playing, and you see that that could be an issue for them, you should bench them no matter what they say. However, De La Fuente refuses to do that consistently. Gaby absolutely should not have played against Georgia because they didn't really need him. Sure, they wanted to ensure being first in the group and having a certain amount of points so they could fit into the first pot for the group stage draw of the Euros. But Spain has so much depth in the midfield that playing Michel Merino or Zubamendi would not have been that much of a downgrade on Gaby against Georgia with only one good player in the entire squad practically. And it gets even more unbelievable when De La Fuente's excuse was that Gaby wanted to play so that he could eventually break Sergio Ramos's appearance record for Spain. And sure, that's a great thing, but it doesn't make sense because Gaby is an animal and so he'll always want to play. Imagine you lay out in front of your dog a million treats. They will eat as many as they can until they get so sick that they cannot eat anymore. It's the exact same thing for Gaby. He will take any opportunity to express his passion for his team and fight for a badge that he cares about no matter the cost. Gaby will never ever turn down an opportunity to play and it's his manager and Spain's national team's responsibility to bench him when they need to bench him because Barcelona does not have the option of doing that when he's with Spain. The Royal Footballing Federation in Spain is the body that governs all football related activities in the country and one of their wonderful rules is that their Spanish clubs have no right to refuse to let their players go to the national team. Sure, they can go ahead and make requests to the RFEF that their players don't go as they did with Pedri when he was requested to go to the Olympics immediately after the Euros, but it's up to the Spanish board to refuse that and they barely ever do it seems like. The Spanish national team and De La Fuente especially have proven over and over again that they have no ability to think about the future because sure, this is terrible for Gaby, but it's also terrible for Barcelona and it's also terrible for the Spanish national team. They should have given him rest to not risk injury because they desperately need him in the Euros. Gaby's very important to that squad and honestly, I don't think they can win the Euros or be as competitive without Gaby and a lot of it has to do with the passion that he shows that other players just can't. He's been called a passion merchant ever since he debuted for Barcelona and though there is so much more to his game than passion, it is a very important part of his game literally diving into plays and running harder than everyone else on the pitch while being just as technically skilled and agile as anyone else. However, it is Gaby's passion that I'm most worried about. Gaby tore his ACL and that's terrible but a lot of players can recover from that and I know because I had the same exact injury and I recovered just fine so you can make a good recovery and even become better than you were before after ACL surgery. It doesn't necessarily have big long-lasting effects like Pedri's injury does like muscle injuries to your hamstring or thigh or things like that. However, the meniscus is a slightly different story because it is difficult to repair. However, we weren't given an exact reason or what was wrong with the meniscus so it's hard to speculate at this point but just be on the lookout for anything to come up about the meniscus because if it does it could be an issue. However, I'm concerned about his passion because I'm worried being injured so badly and I can promise you ACL injuries hurt a lot that it may make him take himself out of tackles or pull out of tackles a little bit more than he did. That's what's so important about his game that passion and energy is what brought him that starting spot at Barcelona at 16 and saw him receive the number nine for the Spanish national team at such a young age. But instead of speculating and getting all doomsday about what could possibly happen, I want to try and think positive. Just from his reaction after the injury, apparently crying out and screaming that why is it him? How could this happen to him? You can tell that he's already dying to be back on the pitch. So from now on until he's back, every single match that he watches with his friends, family or at the pitch of Barcelona playing, he will desperately want to be there with him because that's just the mentality that he has. And so I think he will do whatever it takes to make himself healthy again to bring him back to the top level. However, I think it's very important that he's being coached by Chavi at the moment because Chavi also experienced a bad ACL injury at a young age and recovered to become the player that he was. And you can say what you want about Chavi and his managing abilities, but I think he has a very good ability to read players. And so he should understand that Gavi is going to be pushing like crazy to get back to the top level as soon as possible. And hopefully the training staff will be there to calm him down and not rush him into anything. But as I may have alluded to before, I may be worried about it, but I don't think that he will ever lose that passion that has created the player that he is today. A lot of people for right or for wrong have been calling it a question the Barcelona physios for all the injuries we've been experiencing, but I think it's broader than just Barcelona because you just look at Real Madrid and all the injuries they are suffering and globally too. There are so many young players getting really bad injuries at a very young age right now, probably because of all of the matches they are playing. So I don't think it's a problem with Barcelona physios and I think Gavi is in very good hands to become as healthy as possible again. Florian Wirtz, the German who is always rumored with Barcelona, actually had an ACL injury a few seasons ago and he came back right now to be even better than he was before. And now all the teams want him, including Barcelona. And I don't think there's any reason to believe that Gavi couldn't do the same thing. But it must be emphasized that Luis de la Fuente is absolutely responsible for this and it's unbelievable that he's not taking responsibility for this, that he's blaming Gavi for wanting to play. Of course he wants to play, he's hungry. It's your responsibility as a manager to manage your players and play them intelligently so they don't risk injury. And he didn't do that with Pedri and now with Gavi and God forbid he does it with Luminium Mall because it seems like he's overplaying him right now as well. When he comes back he will still be that dog that will eat as many treats as possible. Just hopefully at that time there will be coaches and people around him that can hold him back when he needs to rest. If anyone was up for this challenge it would be Gavi. Stay strong amigo. To learn more about Gavi check out this video about the story of Gavi and just know that in one year Gavi will be back and balling like no other. Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next one. Peace