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"Iago Aspas is a great goal scorer who will surprise people this season," said Bleacher Report La Liga columnist Michael Cerna during preseason.

In personal conversations with Michael before the start of the season, he was convinced that Celta Vigo's Iago Aspas would break out into a La Liga star—"trust me on this," he said.

It was somewhat of a left-field view, considering Iago's limited CV, not to mention the likes of Alejandro Alfaro, Ariza Makukula, Christian Stuani, Jefferson Montero, Marco Ruben and others, who had proven time after time that dominating the Segunda División wouldn't automatically translate to La Liga.

As it turns out, Aspas isn't just La Liga-standard, he has become one of the best players in the league—in doing so, making Michael's words prophetic.

The problem with YouTube highlights is that they don't really give you the full profile of the player in question.

If you based your opinion on Aspas on the compilation shown in this slide, you'd think he was a No. 9.

The fact is, he's more like a nine-and-a-half.

In theory, Celta manager Paco Herrera starts Iago up front, yet Aspas spends portions of the game as a central winger, an inverted winger and a No. 10, while also making runs like a No. 9.

In other words, he has the green-light to disregard positional discipline like Lionel Messi.

The following quote, from Getafe left-back Mané, is relevant to Iago's importance to Celta.

To give you some context, Real Madrid manager José Mourinho was perplexed by the media's focus on Pedro León's limited playing time (via AFP): "You talk of Pedro León as if he was Zinedine Zidane or Diego Maradona or Alfredo di Stefano."

To which, Mané responded (via Paul Macdonald at Goal.com): "León played like Maradona/Zidane at Getafe."

Paco sees Aspas in the same light Carlos Bilardo saw in Maradona and has burdened Iago with expectations Aimé Jacquet put on Zizou to carry the team.