Shortly after Sergio Busquets, there was Oriol Romeu. After the former was promoted to the first team and won the Champions League within a year in the Barcelona first team, many had thought that Romeu would be the next in line, as a key part of Luis Enrique’s Barcelona B side.
It wasn’t to be and he ended up moving for Chelsea, before going on loan to Stuttgart and Valencia, then finally settling at Southampton.
There he’s become a regular part of a Premier League side, but as his journey suggests, it hasn’t always been smooth sailing. In a recent interview with Sport, he opened up on why things didn’t work out for him at Los Che.
“I came from Chelsea thinking I was the ******* boss and, when I hit the bends, I said to myself: ‘I have to play here because I am a Chelsea player and I have a certain status.’ I even compared myself to some of my colleagues that I knew from Barca or the national team and thought: I’ve played with them and I will end up playing one way or another.”
“You end up thinking that the only one who doesn’t see it is your manager but in the end I realised that, if I haven’t played for three months, maybe the one in the wrong is me. I arrived at Valencia with a big head.”
He was also asked which players he had enjoyed playing alongside most and which opponents was his trickiest. Close observers of Spanish football won’t be surprised at his choices, especially as a central midfielder.
“From close up, my colleague at Southampton, James Ward-Prowse, and at Valencia, [Dani] Parejo, a spectacular player. The one that made things most difficult for me, I would say David Silva, because he’s an intelligent player that puts you in very dangerous situations. He’s not strong, he’s not fast, but he ends up being much more dangerous than players who are strong and fast.”
Romeu was making the media appearance of the back of releasing a book, a diary from last year’s season. During the interview, he spoke to the issues with social media, the help Juan Mata gave him at Chelsea and the importance of reading.
