The situation
Saliu and Gladis will surely be the happiest and proudest parents in the world today . And it is that few can say that they have a son who plays for FC Barcelona and who will also play a World Cup with Spain. The party will surely also reach Guinea Bissau, where the child’s father was born, and the Dominican Republic, where the mother comes from, but above all the modest neighborhood of Sant Martí in Barcelona, where she lived her childhood and adolescence, accompanying her parents. in a humble family business. The ‘Airplane’, that’s what his grassroots teammates called him, very soon saw his aptitude for the sport . He stood out so much in speed that his first steps were directed towards athletics at the San Gabriel school, but the boy loved to kick the ball, and Espanyol was the first to notice this smiling young man. However, fate had other plans for Alejandro, and at the age of eight he entered La Masia, from where he never left. It was his middle brother Edi who inoculated him with a passion for soccer . He was the youngest of three brothers, but it quickly became apparent to him that he had something different. His first steps in soccer were taken as a striker, but little by little he was delaying his position, although he never stopped seeing the rival goal.
Espanyol, his first home
It was a shrewd and well-known scout like Albert Puig who went to see him playing for Espanyol one day and decided that this kid who looked like lightning had to play for Barcelona. And he demanded it insistently, until the parents gave the final yes, aware that Alejandro was culé to the core. He did not stay to sleep at La Masia, but every afternoon he was a fixture. “His conditions for him were brutal. We knew we had a diamond in the rough”, recalls former manager Xavi Vilajoana, who was in grassroots football at the time. Turning a deaf ear to the siren songs of the Premier, Alejandro continued burning stages, until reaching the subsidiary, the last rank before making the leap to the first team. Ronald Koeman was the one who made him debut, in a game of unfortunate memory for the blaugrana: the 0-3 against Bayern at the Camp Nou in September 2021. Little more than a year later, Balde, now Alejandro falls short, he is one step away from making his debut with Luis Enrique’s team in a World Cup, he is a fixture in Xavi’s eleven and is about to seal a new agreement as a first team player for all purposes. His numbers are as spectacular as they are resounding: he is the sixth player most used by Xavi, with 1,140 minutes, more than Jordi Alba (828) and Marcos Alonso (853), his competitors in the left lane .