Young starlet Pablo Torre doesn’t need to look far for examples to follow when he arrives at FC Barcelona this summer.
The 19-year-old playmaker, who has been impressing at Real Racing Club de Santander, arrives in Catalonia on the back of a successful season with his hometown club, who he helped earn promotion to LaLiga SmartBank for next season.
For example, Pedri González made a big impact at Barça in the summer of 2020 after arriving from UD Las Palmas and Gavi shone in the pre-season of 2021, with Torre now hoping to do the same this summer.
“It’s not easy to leave the club of your life, the club that is and will be my life,” said Torre on social media, in a video message to thank his club for helping him develop to this point. “Real Racing Club de Santander is and will be my home, a home that is part of the history of my family, and I have had the honour of being part of it.”
The teenager really does have strong ties to the club, as his father, Esteban Torre, played for the Verdiblancos too and helped the side reach LaLiga Santander in 1993.
Now, at FC Barcelona, Torre will find a new home, a club that is especially keen on bringing through young, talented Spanish players. Torre will likely get the chance to link up with Xavi Hernández’s first-team squad in pre-season and will try to convince the coach that he can make a similar impact to the likes of Pedri, Gavi and Ansu Fati.
“We have been following him a while,” Xavi said of Torre. “For me, he’s a natural talent. He can play in midfield, out wide, he’s two-footed, has a great final ball, scores goals and is great from set plays. He’s very young, but he’s a natural talent.”
The coach continued: “He has the capacity to play for Barça for many years. It depends on him now, on his attitude, but he is a humble kid from a football family. It’s a great signing for the present and the future. He will be in the first-team dynamic but will also play with the B team because it’s important at that age to play football. And it’s not easy to get minutes in the first team at that age.”
Clearly, Xavi has watched a lot of Torre and he likes what he saw. The midfielder scored 10 goals in Spain’s third tier in 31 appearances this past season and set up nine more.
Torre has also played at U19 level for the Spanish national team and, with Luis Enrique having selected FC Barcelona‘s young midfield stars Pedri, 19 years old, and Gavi, 17 years old, over the past year, Torre can expect to go far if he keeps improving and developing.
At Barça, he will find plenty of competition for a place in the team, while he may have to adapt his game a little to play as an interior midfielder as part of a three-man midfield, rather than as an attacking midfielder, as he did with the Verdiblancos.
There may also be the possibility of operating in wider areas in attack, depending on Xavi’s plans, like Gavi did on occasion last season. Some have compared him to Real Betis midfield maestro Sergio Canales, another former Real Racing Club de Santander academy graduate.
This season Torre was able to take his team’s set pieces, another strength of his, but at FC Barcelona he will likely have to earn his way up the pecking order in the months and years to come.
He may be leaving his home, but Pablo Torre is arriving at a club waiting with open arms for him, and there may be no better place for a talent of this nature to develop.
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