Why did Cubarsí refuse to grow up close to home?

GIRONA"Pau is very much a Barça fan, very much so. His whole life. Robert, his father, instilled that in him from a young age. He took him to the pitch, they would run away whenever they could. And now there's nothing he can do. He just wants Barça, Barça, and Barça. It doesn't matter who calls him, the response is obvious. The only thing he wants is to have a long suit." He is a very close person to Cubarsí and his family. We are just a few hours before the derby between Barça and Girona. A match that Cubarsí will play in the Barça shirt but could also have played in the red and white.

"Of course he has feelings for Girona, but Barça comes first. He's had suitors. Big teams have gone after him. And he's always told them the same thing," Romagós continues. Cubarsí signed for the Girona club in 2015, as a pre-Benjamin player. And he left in 2018, heading for Barcelona, ​​​​as an Alevín player. At that time, the son of a carpenter was already part of a First Division club. Other generations can't say that. But even this fact, by no means minor, wasn't enough to keep him. "Quite simply, Barça called," he adds.

In both 2023 and 2024, the Girona center-back had options to return to Girona. Big or small, only the parties involved know. It's no secret that Pep Guardiola was in love, football-wise, and wanted to recruit him for Manchester City. One of the options considered was, if this were the case, to loan him out to gain experience in Montilivi. Another was to sound him out directly, although the Girona club has never publicly stated this possibility. They could have tried him on land, sea, and air, and Cubarsí would have continued at Barça.

"He has Puyol and Piqué as role models, especially the former. And if injuries spare him, I think he has all the qualities to enter the select group and be one of them. The maturity he shows is unusual. You see him play and you see how he's doing and you forget what he's doing, for years. In fact, he still says that if football didn't go well for him, he'd go work in a carpentry shop. He's a very special kid, Pau," comments Romagós. His family is also special, "very involved in the town." "They participate in different events, some of them social. And you can easily see them with the group."

"They don't flaunt their financial position"

Despite receiving praise from a ton of bands, "he's still a normal guy with a normal job, despite having nothing, normal," says Romagós. "What I mean is, they do what they've always done. They live as if nothing had happened," he opines. "He's received so many accolades: being considered the most promising male athlete, call-ups to the national team, calls from other teams, a renewal with Barça, the fact that he's undisputed choice for Hansi Flick... And he is and is the same as always. They weren't one before all this boom, and now they're different like you never heard of before."

Cubarsí, of course, is still in love with the ball. "He's been doing it ever since he was a kid. We'd see him on the streets of Vilablareix, up and down, always with a ball. He took it to school, to the youth center, to the square. He never left his side. And he wasn't afraid of anything. He'd throw himself on the ground without hesitation to kick it past his opponents. He knew exactly what role he played. He was a defender, and no one could move him from there." Barça didn't either.