Pep Guardiola wanted to be Sergio Busquets: "If I could come back and play as any player, it would be Sergio Busquets."
Lionel Messi used Busquets as a life preserver: "When there will be trouble, he will be there."
Johan Cruyff thought he was automatic: "He is the kind of player you don't need to explain anything to. You just put him in his position, and he performs."
To Vicente del Bosque, Busquets was, well, soccer: "If you watch the whole game, you won't see Busquets -- but watch Busquets, and you will see the whole game."
And to Xavi Hernandez, his former teammate and coach: "Sergio Busquets is the smartest player I've ever seen or played with: he's a genius." Xavi then also said: "We must sign a pivot this summer. It's a priority to have new player there following Busquets' exit."
With Busquets departing Barcelona this summer after spending his entire career in Catalonia, the club needs only to find another guy who the best coach in the world wanted to be and the best player in the world trusted with his life. Someone who Cruyff, the most influential mind in modern soccer, saw as a distillation of the sport itself, a player so elemental to the functioning of the teams he played in that his coaches and teammates were almost incapable of speaking about him in human terms.
That's all then, huh? Does that player even exist?
