The cliché is as unavoidable as it is appropriate. Juan Mata has reached for the stars since he was a boy. One day when he was growing up a friend of his mother's called the house. A local bank had a stall at a trade fair in the city of Oviedo, the theme was a planetarium and they needed a couple of kids to advertise it. Would Juan and his sister, Paula, fancy it? The image of the two gazing up in wonder at the firmament, Juan clasping a telescope to his eye, Paula pointing at the galaxy above, was plastered on billboards and the backs of buses all over the principality of Asturias in northern Spain.

Juan would have been around six or seven but he already stood out – and not just for his astronomy. His father, Juan Manuel Mata, played for Real Oviedo, Burgos, Salamanca, Cartagena and a handful of lower division clubs. Juanín – little Juan, in Asturian Spanish – inherited his ability. Well, not exactly: the day Mata Jr, at 14, turned up to play for Spain's Under-16s, the coach Ginés Meléndez giggled: "I hope you're not as bad as your dad."

Mata senior certainly helped, though. He took his son to the then First Division team Real Oviedo where, many years later, he would end up as adviser to the club's president. He acted as Mata's agent – his clever handling of his son's contract helped make his departure from Valencia possible and beneficial for all sides. And he was also instrumental in the difficult process that took him from Real Madrid to Valencia after the former refused to grant him a first-team place.

He has taken every step with his son who, relieved at being different, says: "I know some kids that have been sunk by their parents." Yet he might never have been there at all. One morning in a bank in Salamanca, Mata senior felt a pistol in his back. The bank was being robbed, the police stormed in and shots were fired.

Juanín was barely a few months old. He joined Real Oviedo at 12, playing with kids a year older than him; at 15 he left home and set off for Real Madrid; at 18 he was a European Under-19 champion, scoring four times; at 19 he left Madrid for Valencia; at 20 he won the Copa del Rey; at 22 he was a world champion, a star stitched into the Spain shirt; and this summer, aged 23, he became a European Under-21 champion too. Now he is off to Chelsea for almost €30m (£26m).

When Mata signed for Valencia in 2007 their coach was Quique Sánchez Flores but Sánchez Flores was not there for long, sacked at 4.30am following defeat at Sevilla. The man who replaced him was Ronald Koeman. Fans hated Koeman but for one thing they were grateful: the Dutchman brought Mata into the team as part of a front three with David Silva and David Villa. Valencia struggled against relegation but finished the season as cup winners. Mata was the revelation.

The subsequent departures of Silva and Villa saw him become occasional captain and take increasing responsibility for creativity: his passing is crisp, his movement intelligent and his timing impeccable when it comes to arriving late to finish or dashing beyond the defensive line. He has scored 28 goals in three seasons. Last season he scored eight and provided eight assists, creating 74 chances. On average, only one player – Real Madrid's Mesut Ozil – created more goalscoring opportunities from open play. At the end of the season, Opta built a team of the season: Mata was one of only two non-Madrid or Barcelona outfield players included, alongside the Málaga winger Santi Cazorla.

Nominally playing on the left, Mata likes to become involved. "I am not," he says, "an old-style winger stuck right out on the wing and limited to running at people and getting crosses in. I like to drop inside and get between the lines. I tend not to try to take people one on one; I believe in movement, interchange and being vertical [incisive]."

With Valencia there was great mobility among the line of three behind the strikers and this summer's Under-21 European Championships, at which Mata provided more assists than anyone else as Spain were proclaimed champions, revealed his capabilities in a more central role. He had become the complete playmaker. It is those qualities that Chelsea – and Fernando Torres, aware of the potential benefits to him – were so keen to add.

There are other qualities. While short and slight at 5ft 7in and 10 st, Mata has long admitted that the Premier League attracts him. "I like," he says, "the dynamism and the intensity." The change of football style does not concern him. The change of lifestyle concerns him still less and should not concern Chelsea. If the fear is personality and the ability to settle, there is no fear. "If you are educated enough, lots of doors open in other leagues," Mata said – and that was a few years ago now.

Articulate and instantly likable, when Mata travelled to South Africa last summer he read up on Nelson Mandela, he studied marketing at Madrid's Complutense University and, having taken classes, he already speaks decent English. There will be support too: Paula lives in Brighton. At 13, Mata entered a general knowledge quiz on the radio, coming first in the whole of Asturias. The prize was a trip to Switzerland, Austria and Germany. It was his first trip abroad. It would not be his last.