Pep Guardiola was Bayern Munich’s manager when he heard whispers about a young talent in the academy that, three decades earlier, had produced him. It was another midfielder, a Barcelona speciality. The boy seemed a blend of nurture and nature, at the finishing school at La Masia that Guardiola rates as the best in the game, with the genes of his father Fran Gonzalez, perhaps Deportivo la Coruna’s greatest ever player, a midfielder who was a LaLiga winner and a Spain teammate of the current Manchester City manager.
“The rumours were there about this player, one of the best in his generation,” said Guardiola. He and Txiki Begiristain, another with Barcelona in his blood, sought to bring him to City. They only belatedly succeeded, years later, at a cost that touches on £50m. Not signing Nico Gonzalez sooner – whether as a teenager, when Porto picked him up in 2023 for €8.5m or last summer – could rank as one of City’s expensive mistakes.
