Gavi took off his warm-up bib and made his way to the bench. It was the 83rd minute of Barcelona’s La Liga game against Sevilla 10 days ago, with Hansi Flick’s side 4-0 up.
As he prepared to take to the pitch, the crowd at the Estadi Olimpic Lluis Companys rose to give Gavi a standing ovation. After almost a year on the sidelines following an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) knee injury, the 20-year-old midfielder was making his return.
Gavi couldn’t hide his smile. His team-mates applauded him and the player he was replacing, Pedri, gave him the captain’s armband. Centre-back Inigo Martinez raised his fists as if he were celebrating a goal.
It would prove to be one of several boosts for Barcelona in a special week, following up that eventual 5-1 win with a 4-1 home victory against Bayern Munich in the Champions League and a 4-0 away demolition of Real Madrid in El Clasico. The contrast to when Gavi initially injured himself couldn’t be more stark.
It happened in a European Championship qualifier against Georgia last November. Three weeks earlier, Xavi’s Barca team had been dealt their first major blow in their La Liga title defence, losing the Clasico 2-1 to a Jude Bellingham-inspired Madrid at Montjuic.
Gavi had been Barcelona’s best player in that Clasico and one of their standout performers at the start of last season. When he pulled up while controlling a ball in the first half of that Georgia game in Valladolid — after suffering a knock three minutes earlier — it was immediately clear he had badly hurt his right knee.
The youngster returned to Barcelona, where he was examined by club doctors. It was decided he would need surgery; an operation that lasted between an hour and an hour and a half. A new documentary, produced by club channel Barca One, called Gavi: The Return shows what he had to go through.
Gavi wanted to return home as soon as possible after the operation. He stayed in the hospital for a day and left the following morning, but after two hours had to ask his physiotherapist Pablo Merino to take him back in.
Gavi leaves the pitch in tears after his injury playing for Spain (Ion Alcoba/Quality Sport Images/Getty Images)
“It was excruciating pain,” he says in the Barca One documentary. “Those who have had that injury know what I mean. I didn’t feel like doing anything. For a month, I didn’t want to see anyone, I just wanted to be alone at home. The first month was very hard.”
Gavi couldn’t rush his recovery. Physiotherapists consulted by The Athletic at the time of his injury pointed out a relapse could have serious consequences and that he would have to be patient. He faced being sidelined for at least 10 months.
Barcelona have had previous cases that showed the importance of waiting. Ansu Fati suffered several relapses and had to undergo surgery four times to correct an issue with the meniscus in his left knee. The 21-year-old is back at Barca now after last season’s loan to Brighton of the Premier League but has yet to return to his pre-injury best.
Pedri, meanwhile, has suffered several muscle injuries since he played 73 games for club and country in his breakout 2020-21 season, albeit without the same kind of consequences as Fati. Barca were on high alert to avoid Gavi getting into a similar situation as that pair.
Gavi chose Merino as his physiotherapist and together they worked on his return.
Instead of thinking of when he would play again, they set small goals to help him get there, such as when he would be able to go out for a drink with friends, when he would be able to walk again without crutches, when he would be able to run. He was able to take his first steps without crutches 40 days after the operation, walking around Barca’s Joan Gamper training ground accompanied by his physiotherapist. When he felt his surgically-repaired leg was getting tired, he stopped.
He and Merino continued with his recovery, only taking a break for Christmas. He used an exercise bike and spent time in the swimming pool of the Hotel Sofia, near Barcelona’s Camp Nou stadium (the club have no pool or water recovery system at their training facility).
Pedri hands Gavi the armband for his first appearance since injury (Javier Borrego/Europa Press via Getty Images)
That was a big boost for Gavi, who could enter the water using crutches but could do without them completely once submerged. “He could work on elements such as elasticity and certain gestures that were unthinkable out of the water,” Merino told Barca One. “He found himself again just by being able to walk.”
Gavi was joined by two more physios just over two months into his recovery: Yon Alvarez and Juan Carlos Perez. He spent time with them on the beach or in the mountains to break up his exercise routine. In this second stage of his recovery, they conducted daily sessions with him for the first seven months. On some days, they would work mornings and afternoons.
They didn’t talk about football with Gavi, instead helping him to relax by discussing other topics. One of those was a ‘recovery playlist’ they posted on Spotify. The choices surprised some on social media, with songs including Unwritten by Natasha Bedingfield, Baby by Justin Bieber and Ludacris, and Tubthumping by Chumbawamba. It also featured Blur, Michael Jackson, Nirvana, AC/DC, Florence & The Machine and American band The National.
Those choices might not sound out of the ordinary for British or American readers, but they are for a footballer in Spain — where reggaeton, a genre of music originally from Panama, has taken over dressing rooms.
The physios also preached patience with Gavi, encouraging him not to rush when it came to working with the ball again or thinking about his final objective. Merino took a picture with him every time they took another step to encourage further progress: the first day he could walk again, the first day he could run, the first day he was able to touch a ball etc.
Club sources — who, like all those cited in this article, asked to remain anonymous to protect relationships — say Gavi took each stage very seriously and approached them all with plenty of rigour.
He travelled with the Barca squad in early April when they played the first leg of a Champions League quarter-final against Paris Saint-Germain. He took a look around the Parc des Princes pitch as his team-mates trained, but didn’t return balls to them using his feet, instead bending to pick up and throw them instead — a sign of how seriously he was taking his recovery.
All of that was key to Gavi finally returning after 11 months. He was able to pass balls again at the end of July, in mid-September he was back with the group, and his return finally came in that game on October 20 against Sevilla, 336 days after that fateful appearance in Spain vs Georgia.
Since then, he has been given 14 minutes by Flick, including in that game and brief cameos against Bayern and Madrid. His reassimilation will be gradual, taking advantage of Barcelona’s well-stocked midfield, where Marc Casado, Fermin Lopez and Dani Olmo are all in good form.
In those three short substitute appearances Gavi has been given so far, he has shown all of his character, desire and strength once again.
Barca’s ‘heart with legs’, as Xavi called him, is seemingly back and here to stay.
(Top photo: Dennis Agyeman/Europa Press via Getty Images)
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