How Rodri won the Golden Ball with no goal, no assist, no defining stat
Rodri and America. It was always meant to be; a unique relationship forged by chance and moulded by destiny. Sixteen years before he kissed the World Cup trophy, confetti showering on him and fireworks wiggling into East Rutherford skies, he was in Connecticut, almost 100 miles from the scene of his conquest, as part of an exchange programme. His father wanted him to pursue academics in the United States, but he was firm on his ultimate desire to be a footballer. But his father had other plans, and imagining that the American life would alter his son’s ambitions, he packed him off to a student programme in Connecticut. Rodri. Suddenly, the quiet teenager from the Madrid suburb of Villanueva de la Cañada found himself in the middle of a forest in Conn-et-ee-cut, as they call it. “It was like I was stepping into a Hollywood movie,” he wrote in Player’s Tribune. “You know the movies where the kids go to the camp on a big lake and there’s wooden canoes and you’re climbing trees and …
