Well tears in his eyes, Petri has picked up his second horrible entry of the season. Mr. Duzin games up to his comeback at the start of 2024. I mean, I think Petri was the most heartbreaking one because it's literally in tears. And you know he's another Mr. Lundgren, you know this, it happening to emerge. Really, I felt for him the poor kid watching that game. It's come to the point where a lot of Barcelona fans are saying that this kid is cursed. And a lot of them are saying that Barcelona should sell him now to escape the saga. So is there a future for Petri at Barcelona or even a future in professional football for him at all? Well, let's take a look at how we got here first. 17 year old Petri finally makes his move to FC Barcelona where he would play first year football for the first time after appearing in almost every match the season before for second tier side, Lus Palmas. And let's just say it didn't take very long for Petri's potential to be recognized and abused by every single one of his coaches. That season, Petri would go on a plane every league match for Barcelona, but two, while being selected for every single match possible for the Spanish national team, eventually playing the most matches, 73 of any player in top flight football in at least 20 years. The kid was absolutely incredible. He rightly earned himself a starting spot in that Barcelona midfield and the Copa Trophy while he was at it. He slid into the midfield with Frankie Dayong and Sergio Busquets about as well as any player possibly could have. However, all of this game time took a toll on him, a toll that he is still suffering from today. But other young talents have played a lot of football before too, so why did Petri suffer so much? Most of the young players that are able to avoid significant injuries at young ages are more muscular than Petri was. And though I'm not a doctor, I know from my own history of rehabbing my ACL surgery that increasing muscle mass can change the way your ligaments and muscles are stressed during exercise. This is probably why Petri was so susceptible to injuries immediately and why the likes of Rooney and Messi weren't really as susceptible that early. They had a little bit more muscle mass to them. There was a little bit more around their legs to protect them. But it's not just that this kid had a big injury one year that took him out for most of the season. It was the fact that a lot of the injuries that have occurred for Petri have happened to more or less the exact same spot on his leg. The first injury he suffered was right at the beginning of the 21-22 season to his right hamstring. Physical therapy rest and icing the area generally takes care of that pretty well. But Petri would end up re-indering that same area later that season, seeing him miss a total of 41 matches that year. And in the following season, Petri would re-injure the same hamstring injury against Manchester United in the Europa League. And he would miss 15 matches for the club. Again, I'm not a doctor, but I do know that when you injure a certain area on your body, you begin to compensate for that injury by using muscles, walking, or operating in a slightly different fashion. That puts less stress on the injured area, but then in turn puts more stress on other areas that are not normally used to having that stress on them. Coming into this season, I think all of the strain on new muscles caused Petri to injure his quad in training earlier this year. He missed two and a half months at the beginning of the season because he strained his quad while taking long shots in practice. Maybe that wouldn't have happened if he had a stronger hamstring. Clearly, the kid's right leg is a liability, because that's pretty much where every significant injury has occurred. But does that mean he's a lost cause? Again, I would love to make a comparison with another player that has gone through something similar and turned it around, but it's hard to find. However, there is another player, in fact, in the Barcelona squad right now, that plays the same position and went through something very similar to Petri, albeit at a slightly older age than him, Gundawan. According to Transfer Marks, throughout Gundos career, he has been injured at least 24 times. More importantly, though, is the fact that these injuries have been very significant. At 23 years old, he had a severe spinal surgery, which saw him miss over 400 days of football. Some of the doctors even told him that he could never play football again. Now, we know that's not true, but then three years later, he tore his ACL and missed nearly the entire 16-17 season with Manchester City. Now, the reason I want to focus on this at all is the fact that every time Gundo came back from one of these injuries, he came back better. But why was he able to do that? Ilka Gundawan is a clean and tidy midfielder, and he always has been similar to Petri. They make smart, sometimes quick moves with the ball that fools defenders and opens up spaces for them. That allows for them to make both smooth passes and create chances for teammates, and sometimes even themselves. Injuries to midfielders like Gundawan and Petri affects them significantly differently than do the same injuries to players that rely much more on their physicality, like their agility and their speed. Say we have two players, one Petri and one in Bappe. Both of them are great players in their own right, but they are both great at very different things. Bappe is fast and has a rocket of a right foot. Petri is agile, but great because of his footballing brain and his incredible touch on the ball. Now, imagine they both strained their quadriceps, the same thing that just happened to Petri. For Bappe, this means that even when he does come back fully healed, maybe he's going to be a little bit more cautious than normal when taking shots, and maybe he's just going to be a bit slower off the line. Those small alterations can completely change in Bappe's effectiveness, but Petri is a much different story. See, with this quad injury coming up again, Petri will likely have to change the way he plays, a little bit until he has completely and utterly healed from this injury. When Petri hurt his quad the first time, he was trying to shoot from distance on his right foot. When he injured his quad the second time he was trying to play a long ball again with his right foot. This means that they were probably exerting a little too much pressure on his right leg, meaning that he probably can't shoot much with his right leg from distance and play to many long balls anymore for the foreseeable future. Whenever he does come back, Petri is probably going to have to make that concession in the way he plays so as to not injure himself again. That will absolutely hurt his effectiveness and overall threat as a player, but he can still be incredibly valuable. We just need other players that have proven to be good at those long balls, mostly just goondawon and kubarcy to take over the reins of doing it for the side. However, no matter what Petri chooses to leave out of his game, we know that Petri has to come back as strong if not stronger, at the few things that don't necessarily hurt his leg, his tight ball control as well as his quick passes and his footballing intelligence. Like the way goondawon was able to come back at Dortmund after his spinal surgery as well as after his ACL surgery at Man City and be better or if not just as good as a player as he was before the injuries. But I get it, there is still a lot of risk in it and if you want an example, well just look at on Tsufati. Tsufati experienced a tremendous disaster with his knee that really took a toll on him. But when he was finally healthy from it, finally able to come back during the 22-23 season, he looked to be a significantly worse player because he was unable to adapt to the fact that he had not only lost some of his agility, part of what made him so good at taking players on, but also he lost his confidence. He wasn't able to adapt quickly, he just wasn't the Tsufati that everyone remembered, he wasn't able to do that adaptation. However, Petri's adaptation should be a lot easier. And not only does he have goondawon who is experienced with injuries that could have crippled his career, but Petri is also a very similar profile with high football intelligence and his ability to adapt. And high technical ability, things that don't necessarily need to go away when you're injured in the way that losing agility makes sense to lose. If Kules and FC Barcelona are talking about selling Petri, they should really be focusing on one primary question. Can he adapt to playing a way that lessens his risk of injury without significantly hurting what he offers on the pitch? I believe his game can still be elite without long balls or several long distant shots because realistically he doesn't do that a ton anyway. I think Barcelona should keep Petri, however if they do they really need to consider having a strong backup option. That is exactly where my boy Ferdinand Lopez can come in. Now I know this season he has been very unimpressive, I hyped him up a ton and so far we haven't really seen much from him. I think that's because he really isn't getting a fair chance. Chavu is not playing him much and when he does come in he's getting these garbage minutes where the team is desperate and so there's a lot of pressure on his head and he continuously makes the wrong decision. So this is the time for Ferdinand Lopez to not only prove himself but help support Petri in his recovery and his healing and bringing him back to a fantastic player. A player that isn't so injury prone. I think it's possible for Petri to come back from that. The squad just needs to be in a healthier position to rotate him a bit more and the guy needs to have a better idea of his way of playing that won't risk the health of his right leg like shooting from long distance and playing long balls. Now we just talked a lot about Petri's future but go click here to learn a lot more about that year that basically poisoned Petri. He played 73 matches was absolutely incredible and was overused to hell and that's where we are today. But thank you for watching and I'll see you in the next one. Peace.