The photographer of the second star

He is the dark horse. The straight-A kid in a class full of prodigies. On Sunday, at the Metropolitano, Lamine Yamal is once again the most unsettling player on the pitch: he takes on his full-back again and again, tries ten dribbles, completes six and plays seven passes that end in a shot. Cubarsí is the perfect squire, the flawless guardian of the defence, with 106 accurate passes out of 108. And Pedri directs the whole show with his turns, his passes and his carries.

But nobody talks about the kid who does everything the others don't want to do. Fermín presses to force the opponent into mistakes, breaks lines with ruthless carries and finishes on a sixpence. He does it twice: on 45 minutes, to cancel out Giuliano Simeone's goal, and on 66, from Lamine's pass, to win it for Barcelona (1-2). Six shots, three on target, two goals and a rating of 9.55, the highest of the match and the best of his season. Fermín is not the magician of the show, but he knows every trick.

Fermín is not the magician of the show, but he knows every trick

It is no one-off. In his last three matches, against Alavés, Aston Villa and Atlético, he has three goals and three assists, and this season he has eight goals and seven assists in 1,109 minutes. He is involved in 1.22 goals every 90 minutes: in La Liga, only Raphinha, Lamine Yamal and Mbappé do it more often. His Big Data rating is 80: he is sixth of the 3,616 midfielders in the 37 leagues we analyse, with 93 in finishing, 91 in chance creation, 89 in box arrivals and 80 in pressing. He attacks the box like a striker and presses high like few midfielders.

He is sixth of the 3,616 midfielders in the 37 leagues we analyse

And yet Fermín had to watch the party from the other side of the camera. On 17 May, against Betis, he fractured the fifth metatarsal of his right foot, a month before the World Cup, and Spain won their second star without him. He returned to the national team in September, but under De la Fuente he has played only 99 minutes across three Nations League matches, none of them in full. He arrives at this squad with the second-highest rating on the list, behind only Lamine Yamal (89), and with an Olympic gold medal in his pocket: at Paris 2024 he scored six goals, two of them in the final.

Ernest Hemingway wrote in A Farewell to Arms that "the world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places". The world broke Fermín's foot a month before the party and left him out of the picture. Six months later, he is the one treading hardest.

Data: API-Football, 2026/27 season up to 09/11/2026 (including Atlético 1-2 Barcelona on 08/11), 2026/27 Nations League and the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. Big Data rating and percentiles: Al Primer Toque, against the midfielders of the 37 leagues we analyse, with the league coefficient. Injury: Fox Sports, 18/05/2026. Spain squad: DAZN, 09/11/2026. Fermín's sample: 1,109 minutes (776 in the league, 234 in the Champions League and 99 for Spain). Quote: Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (1929).