Spain manager sets his sights on Barcelona’s latest breakthrough star

The Spanish national team has always been an amalgamation of the best talents in Spain with a special focus on the two big giants – Barcelona and Real Madrid.

In recent years, however, the representation from the capital city has declined significantly while the Catalan core has grown in strength and the trend is quite conspicuously visible.

As it stands, Real Madrid have no players in the Spanish NT after Dani Carvajal’s injury and Nacho Fernandez’s departure.

Barcelona, meanwhile, have Pedri, Lamine Yamal, Pau Cubarsi, Fermin Lopez, Ferran Torres and Dani Olmo in the national team.

List to grow

As was revealed earlier this week, Luis De La Fuente has his eyes on Gavi and hopes to incorporate him into the Spanish national team dynamics as soon as possible.

Now, according to reports from MARCA, the Spain manager also sees Marc Casado as a special option for the senior team and thus has him on his radar. It will not be surprising if the player is called up to join the team in the coming months.

The La Masia starlet, after all, has been in imperious form for Barcelona in his first full season at the highest level and has stood his ground with great quality and maturity on the biggest of stages.

Casado has shown great excellence in his defensive awareness, work rate, distribution and duel-winning while also serving as an able creative outlet for the team from the deep midfield.

At just 21 years of age, the young phenom just dished out two masterclasses against Bayern Munich and Real Madrid last week even earning two goal contributions in the process.

While he assisted Raphinha’s second goal with a wonderful aerial ball over the defence against Bayern, he opened up Real Madrid’s defence for Robert Lewandowski’s opener in El Clasico.

It is thus not a surprise that the Spanish national team setup sees Casado as a valuable option for the defensive midfield where Rodri currently serves as the mainstay. For Barcelona, however, the only concern will be with the player’s workload.