EXCLUSIVE: The Chelsea and Spain star talks about his development from a scrawny kid in Barcelona to one of the world’s top midfielders
“Sometimes things happen and you don’t know why or how – but they happen.”

Cesc Fabregas was always destined to be a footballer. He was even destined to wear the No.4 shirt just like his boyhood idol Pep Guardiola predicted when he was just a kid. What no one knew was that it would be in the chilly city of London where a hot-blooded youngster would forge a reputation as one of the finest midfielders of his generation.

In his youth everything revolved around his beloved Barcelona, the team he had watched at Camp Nou almost every weekend since he could remember. But his relationship with the club wasn’t easy, not even at the beginning.

“Long before signing for Barcelona, I went for a trial with Albert Benaiges [who ran Barca’s youth teams]. That was the first time I put on the Barcelona shirt in a real game,” Fabregas revealed to Goal. Normally he would wear it in the square back in his village - where neighbours knew they could find him any time there were no classes at school - but never before in an official match.

He was not even 10 years old at the time but there is one thing he remembers from those try-outs at La Masia – “the presence of a tall, blonde centre-back, who was a great defender.” That was Gerard Pique, who defended against Cesc in that game because “they played me as a centre-forward”. It would be another 15 years until Guardiola, by now coach of Barca, would use him as a false nine. “But they never called me back,” he laments.

Cesc carried on playing for the team in his village, Arenys de Mar, before joining Mataro, the most important team along the Maresme coast. He was there just six months. The coaches at his new team hid him every time they played against Barcelona or if there was a scout nearby. “It’s true. They took me off when the Barcelona scouts came. I found out later on, but at the time I didn’t understand anything,” he admits.

But an old wolf named Rodolfo Borrell, now a coaching director at Manchester City, identified the intelligence and ability of that midfielder, still scrawny and shy, and ended up taking him to La Masia, where he would link up – this time as team-mates – with Pique.

After a year they were joined by Lionel Messi, who was even shier than Cesc. “We won everything,” the midfielder remembers. “We were the only youth ‘B’ team who could win the league from Espanyol’s youth ‘A’ team. The talent we had in that team was the best I have seen at youth level.”

However, the cycle that was supposed to take them all to the first team was cut off in 2003, just before the start of the Under-17 World Cup in Finland, where he began as a substitute and ended up as top scorer. The story is well known. Cesc swapped his beloved Barcelona for Arsenal in England…

The Gunners invited Cesc and his family to London. “We were received in person by Arsene Wenger and the vice-chariman David Dein,” he says, still surprised even now. “They proposed training with the first team in the first year.” Cesc was bemused. “I understood nothing. What were they doing with a kid like me? It was summer, why weren’t they on holiday? I was stunned that they stopped everything for a simple schoolboy from Barcelona.”

But for Wenger, Cesc was not just a mere schoolboy, as the rest of the world would soon find out.

“They wanted me to move up to the first team within a short time, they believed in me very much but I still couldn’t make out if they were selling me a dream. It was true that Wenger had interrupted his holidays in France to see me and make me the offer in person. That was decisive and we decided to take that route. And everything was phenomenal after that.”

His adaptation was silky smooth, partly because of how well he got on with Philippe Senderos at their home in London, hosted by a landlady called Noreen. “I always got her to cook pasta with tomatoes and chips, my favourite dishes,” he laughs. And he admits that “I never cooked them myself because I am terrible, but I shared the ham and the meats that my family sent over.” Jamon Iberico, of course. That makes things easier. “The adaptation wasn’t as difficult as it seems,” he says with a wink.

His progress was meteoric. “It couldn’t have gone better,” he says. “At the age of 16 I was the youngest player in the history of the club to debut, to score in the Premier League and also in the Champions League. That allowed me to reach the level I have been at for the last 12 years and that’s difficult in football today. It’s more physical and the speed is incredible. The only thing you can do is to keep training your body and mind to stay around for as long as possible.”

Cesc has won a lot since making his debut as a professional footballer. “I have been very fortunate in that I have played in a lot of finals and won many of them, some very important ones,” he says. “I have won almost everything.”

One title still eludes him, however: “The Champions League, it’s been my dream since I was a boy,” he says without blinking. For a Barca fan brought up in Catalunya, the continental crown is the pinnacle to which any youngster can aspire in football, given that the links to the national team are not as strong as in the rest of Spain. Even though the years have passed, he has matured and won a World Cup, he is not thinking about quitting until he has completed that circle. But he admits: “At the moment, Bayern and Barcelona are above the rest. Real Madrid have a good team too but the rest of us follow after them.”

The farewell of Jose Mourinho, who persuaded him to join Chelsea and gave him his only Premier League title to date, and the return of Guus Hiddink make Chelsea a great unknown in Europe this season, although in 2012 they went all the way to Champions League glory after the sacking of Andre Villas Boas.

“Even though we are not the favourites, this is football and the best don’t always win,” warns Cesc. “It’s not impossible and we’re going to give it our best shot.”

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