Manchester City’s record signing on his fear of tattoos, still being at university and where he and his teammates need to improve“You can pretend a couple of times, play a role a bit, but in the end you are what you are,” Rodrigo Hernández says, and he is a deep midfielder. The way he tells it, player and person are inseparable and everything makes sense. Listening to him talk a little like he plays – intelligently, thoughtfully, calmly – it is as if there is an inevitability about it all, an inescapable logic; like this is just what he is and where he was always going to be, even if his story need not have brought him here, to his place: the middle of a football pitch.
Rodri sits on a bench on the grass at Spain’s Las Rozas training camp, tracing his journey. He hasn’t come far – he was raised near here to the north-west of Madrid and began playing just down the road – but he has come a long way, learning en route. He describes himself as a sponge, soaking it all up, from Madrid to Villarreal and back via a university degree he’s still doing and on to Manchester, where he became the most expensive player in City’s history.