Some days he would go before training, others after training and there were days he went before and after training, but every day without fail Ronald Araújo would head to the bullring. He was 19, recently arrived in Spain, and what he wanted most was to fit in. The bullring is a small cage with portable metal panels on wheels, relentlessly receiving and returning endless passes, and it became his place. Because if everything was different, ask the Uruguayan to name the hardest thing about moving to Barcelona as a teenager 6,000 miles from home and his response is simple: “the ball”.
“Football happened fast,” Araújo says. “At 17, I was still in my little home town, playing for the local team, Huracán Rivera. At 17, I went to Montevideo on trial at Rentistas. I was in the under-19s for five months, got promoted to the seniors in the second division, then they transferred me to Boston River. From Rivera to Barcelona in two years; it was mad.
“My dad worked in forestation. He would be away two weeks, come back a couple of days and go again. My mum was a cleaner. Rivera for me is tranquility, peace. Being out in the countryside with my dad, the animals. Whenever I can, I go because it relaxes me. Barcelona was a leap, adapting to the city. The first eight months, I lived near the training ground, then I went up the mountainside to Pallejà, with pine forests. Leave the house and you’re in the mountains, an escape. But when I got in the first team travelling every three days, I came back down the hill.”
Initially signed for Barcelona’s B team – if adapting to the city “cost”, to use Araújo’s word – getting used to the game was a step again. Rivera is not just on the Brazilian border; it straddles it, a two-nation town. “Cross the street and you’re in Brazil, literally,” he says. “We speak Portunol, a mix of Portuguese and Spanish. My family has Brazilian roots. You had to pay for Uruguayan TV; to watch Brazilian you just pulled the aerial up, so we watched Brazilian TV. The music was Brazilian. The food was Brazilian.”
And the football was ... well, Uruguayan.
Araújo laughs. He recalls his dad bandaging him up, protection for a 13-year-old already playing with adults. No mercy and no messing around. He had started as a forward – “I never imagined being a defender” – and didn’t retreat until he reached Montevideo at 17, attention turning from his idol Ronaldinho to Carles Puyol, Rio Ferdinand, Giorgio Chiellini and Leonardo Bonucci. He had the basics: 6ft 2in, strong, forged in a footballing culture he says is rooted in “commitment, bravery, the desire to help your family”.
It is a culture different from what he found when he changed clubs and continent, Araújo joining Barcelona B, the final stage of the Masia academy. “In Uruguay, it’s more direct. It has evolved a bit but the goalkeeper would boot the ball up or, if not, pass it to us and we would boot it. Bringing the ball out didn’t exist,” Araujo says. “We didn’t really work tactically. You defend, that’s it. In Europe, they ask other things of you. I had to change a lot.
“The ball: it flew. The first few sessions, there would be 20 in a small space and I would touch it three times and lose it three times. [They’re thinking:] ‘And this guy?!’” Araújo recalls, his laugh deep and his smile wide, long powerful limbs folded into his chair, sliders slipping off big feet. “There were guys there who had been doing this since they were eight. I came from another football. To go to Barcelona, which is different in its philosophy even to many in Europe, was difficult. But I got to work. I said to myself: I have to play here.
“We have a plaza de toros. I would go morning and evening: right, left, positioning. The metal sheets have lights: red, green, depending on what you have to do. There are games: this many points for hitting it with your right foot, this many for the left. I would go with one of the coaching staff in the morning before the session and alone in the evening. I lived nearby: grab a ball, come back, do an hour, take a shower, go home, drink mate. I also watched videos, asked [B team coach Xavi] García Pimienta’s staff to show me, learned.
“I never had that idea that said: ‘it’s Barcelona, it’s too hard’; I said to myself: ‘I’m going to play.’ Some lads had minutes in the first team and I thought: ‘I want that’, ‘I want to go on pre-season.’ At first people said ‘Araújo, I-don’t-know-what…’ But I said: ‘I’m going to play in the B team, prove myself, get my first-team chance. Thankfully, that’s what happened.”
A graduate now, the lessons were useful and the evolution apparent, but not over. “This season I’m focusing on physical preparation to avoid injuries. I’m a bit of a ‘hard head’, stubborn, and I would keep going until I broke down. I have to be more careful,” he says. “I also have to keep growing technically and tactically. Sometimes being well positioned, as we are now, you avoid a run. We get a lot of offsides now because we’re better positioned.
“With Xavi, they show you videos: what you do well, things to improve. You see what you have to do more of. I’ll also go to a coach and say: ‘Can we do this?’ Corners, say. Maybe we’re not scoring from them, so practise more. Or long passes: line up, 10 balls right, 10 left, repeat. After every session there’s something. Playing every three days you have to be careful, but every day I work on what I think isn’t going well.
“There’s this thing in Uruguay: ‘No, he’s not made in la Masia…’, but I consider myself part of it,” Araújo continues. “I wasn’t there for as long as others but Barcelona B changed me. I learned the philosophy. I would have breakfast and lunch in the Masia, spend time with them there, and that helped me a lot.”
It’s not just in Uruguay. In March, Xavi said that Araújo was “one of the best in the world without the ball [but] with the ball, he has to improve,” adding: “He doesn’t always find the best solution because he hadn’t trained here [as a kid], he’s not homegrown.” Yet the Barcelona coach also described him as the player who had most improved, his application paying off. “He has changed how he plays, which is what we asked of him, and is gaining weight in the team,” the coach said. Now, he is indisputable.
“I have adapted,” Araújo agrees. “Xavi changed the group and I learned the philosophy, which had been lost a bit in the last few years. He guides me, we watch videos, and above all it’s confidence. He knows which qualities I have, but also trusts that I can play – and now we’re seeing that bear fruit. I feel very comfortable with the ball.” So much so that when he’s asked who’s better at bringing the ball out from the back, him or goalkeeper Marc-André ter Stegen, Araújo laughs and replies: “Er … me … now! I get it more than him, but Marc is another [outfield] player with his feet: spectacular.”
Besides, there is something else: it is not just that Araújo had adapted to Xavi, it is that Xavi has adapted to him. That the ideologue who embodies the club’s footballing identity and talks of DNA has evolved can be seen in the ever increasing importance of Gavi – “There are few players in Europe who could play in Uruguay; Gavi is one,” Araújo says – and above all in the significance of the centre-back.
“Maybe players like me and Pedri, who didn’t go through the whole system, can offer something different too,” Araújo concedes. Maybe? Definitely. If Pedri is, as the Uruguayan puts it, “pure talent”, then Araújo is something else. And while initially there appeared to be some resistance, Xavi has embraced his other, less Barcelonaesque qualities, brought from Rivera. Things you see immediately, in the charisma apparent here as on the pitch; things you hear too. One example became clear during the pandemic: the voice heard in empty stadiums was always his, practically commentating the game.
Araújo laughs. “It’s my way of concentrating,” he says. I’m always talking. From the start, all the time. ‘Right, left, hold, drop…’ We had Leo [Messi] and everyone then but no one said: this guy talks too much. I could see it was ok, that it helped the team. I learned loads from Uruguayan football: character, leadership. And the most important thing for a defender is to defend. That’s what we’re there for. Keep a clean sheet, protect the goal.”
Barcelona have let in just seven in La Liga – although as Araújo admits: “Europe is Europe, for everyone from every league, not just us” – and he is fundamental to that record. “Ronald is an immense defender, with the qualities to mark an era at the club and in world football,” Xavi insisted before the first leg against Manchester United. “I’ve seen few players with his qualities: physical, tactical, technical, concentration, leadership. He’s a spectacular player.”
Fine words but sometimes actions speak louder, so how about this? With Barcelona leading against Atlético recently, Araújo came flying across and cleared into the stands, not so much playing in the bullring as booting the ball out of there all the way back to Uruguay. On the touchline, Xavi Hernández, Barcelona’s coach and the guardian of their footballing faith, watched it sail into the sky and then started to applaud.
