Dos Santos Makes His Debut

By: Daryl | September 2nd, 2007

Big week for Giovani Dos Santos Big week for Barcelona’s Mexican starlet Giovani dos Santos. On Wednesday the 18 year old attacking midfielder got his Spanish citizenship, which makes a big difference when Barcelona can only field 3 non-EU players. Then on Friday he was called up to the Mexican national squad by Hugo Sanchez. And today Dos Santos made his La Liga debut, replacing Thierry Henry with 30 minutes to go of Barca’s 3-1 win over Atletico Bilbao.

Apparently Dos Santos didn’t do anything jaw-dropping in his half hour, though he did draw a red card on a Bilbao defender and just getting on the field and making his La Liga debut at 18 is an achievement in itself. The kid has plenty of expectation on his shoulders for all kinds of reasons. First of all he looks a bit like Ronaldinho, which is a lot of pressure when you have Brazilian blood (his dad was Gerardo dos Santos aka Zizinho) and play for Barcelona. Second, he’s had a stellar youth career, winning the silver ball at the 2005 U-17 World Championship (where Mexico were champions) and the bronze ball at this year’s U-20 World Cup. If that’s not enough, he’s competing against arguably the world’s finest attacking talent at Barcelona in Henry, Ronaldinho, Eto’o, Messi, Deco, Iniesta et al. He was only in the Barca squad against Bilbao after Eto’o got himself injured last week.

But now the debut is done, so here’s wishing the youngster all the best. If all goes well there’ll be another star for us to marvel at in years to come.