At 21 years of age, Arthur Melo has emerged as a shooting star in Brazil. All very fast, beautiful and intense. I’d even venture to say that, with him–and the help of his team at the South American country, which was going through an excellent stretch–national football once again enjoyed a proactive and efficient football. At Grêmio, next to Maicon, Arthur dominated the midfields of South America and kept the ball away from suffering any bad inflicted by opposition. We can say he treated it with proper affection, as it should be.

I confess that, as much as Brazil is a talent-revealer and good players seem to come from around every existing corner, I have never seen a Brazilian quite like him. Most probably because of his youth–plush the fact that he’s only played one year of professional football–he still present some flaws in his game, such as the absence of more vertical passes, the lack of frequent arrivals in the area of his rivals and a somehow weak physicality, considering that the boy is clearly smaller than his regular opponents. But Arthur has made up for it. He has been able to won physical duels by deploying an array of short dribbles and by putting his team out from the pressure zone with passes that always seemed easy. And, just like that, he already has the 2016 Brazil Cup and the 2017 Copa Libertadores in his trophy cabinet.

However, fate was hard at one point. Arthur was injured, staying out of the Club World Cup against Real Madrid, which would have definitely been his apex at that point in his career. Yet he did not tremble nor panicked. He came back even stronger, bringing with him a more attack-focused game which made him advance through the field more than he had ever done before and, consequently, scoring more goals.

Whenever we saw him play in Brazil, it was impossible not to imagine him in Barcelona and even compare him to Xavi Hernández. I know, Xavi is unique. But so can Arthur. Hired by a club with a clear philosophy in place and that will definitely help him improve various aspects of his still only half-polished game, Spain, as well as the world, will get to know one of the rarest jewels ever conceived by Brazil.

It is hard to hold the excitement, but it would be logical and expected for the boy to may have some difficulties in the beginning of his European career. So let’s have a little of patience. The challenge is beautiful, his presence at the 2022 World Cup is already dreamed about and his talent is there to complete the challenge. With all these aspects in place, the young man, from now on at the Camp Nou, only has the pretension of introducing himself to the world saying: “Glad to be here, I was just the final gear Barcelona lacked.”