The fashionable footballer in the Spanish league studies journalism.
Gabri Veiga (O Porriño, 20 years old) debuted his first team number last month with Celta after taking ownership in the six days that opened the championship.
The change on the bench did not change his status, rather it strengthened it.
“It is quite a surprise.
I have seen very few players like him throughout my career”, confesses his coach, the Portuguese Carlos Carvalhal, who describes him: “He does not have a touch or precision profile, but he knows how to play.
He is smart, very strong and knows how to get to finishing zones.”
"It is what is now called a modern midfielder," says Jorge Cuesta, who was his coach in the sky-blue youth team and now watches his emergence from China, where he works at the Wuhan Three Towns base.
From there, he reflects, on behalf of Veiga, about soccer at the base, the maturation period of soccer players and the decisions that are made around many of them.
“Yours is a case that is beyond my understanding.
At the beginning of his second year as a youth player, in 2019, he was one more in the team, he did not stand out, and now he is one of the best soccer players in Spain.
Whoever says that he saw that Gabri was going to be what he is now is lying ”.
“He is the typical footballer to whom you wish all the best.
Very good education, hardworking, sacrificed, with a privileged and talented physique.
He will improve his technical capacity, which is already high ”, predicts Jacobo Montes, Coruxo coach of the 2nd RFEF.
In the summer of 2019, together with his brother Marcos, he took charge of the Celta subsidiary, in the late Segunda B. Fran Escribá was the coach of the first team and in the preseason he liked to train many young people.
A cascade effect was produced that led Veiga to the orders of the Montes brothers, initially for ten days.
No one was waiting for him there, but he carved out a place for himself in the team, in the first three rounds he started and at the age of 17 played fourteen games in the bronze division.
When he went down to help the youth team, Jorge Cuesta thought he was facing a different player than the one he had lent.
“The change was tremendous.
When he made the cadet jump he was talented, but also very big, heavy and somewhat uncoordinated.
It was difficult for him to endure training ”, he recalls.
That boy who at the club suspected that he was not going to be able to finish a game with the youth team suddenly started in Second B. "He put himself above the rest," explains Cuesta.
People are subjected to processes of maturation and growth.
In the soccer player, this development has to do with mental or physical aspects that in the case of Veiga emerged almost suddenly.
And at the right moment, when the coincidence of a call from another boy to the first team led him to complete training sessions for Celta B. “We marked people too early.
This one is going to arrive, I hear about players of juvenile age.
How can you know?
How and when will that child develop?
How is he going to behave in the face of difficulties, for example, in the face of competition? ”, Cuesta wonders.
Gabri Veiga arrived at Celta at the age of 11.
His case is hardly comparable to that of Iago Aspas, who made him even younger and had to leave on loan at a youth age before reaching the first team when he was about to turn 23.
Now Gabri Veiga dazzles among the greats with six goals and two assists so far in the championship.
Only Aspas, and up front, surpasses those numbers at Celta.
It was the last under-21 that Luis de la Fuente made his debut and he may be among the first to debut in the senior team.
Luis Enrique included him in a pre-list for the World Cup in Qatar when his matches in the First Division could be counted on his fingers.
"It's different," Carvalhal confides.
He is a midfielder of origin who can play as a pivot or playmaker, with arrival and a powerful shot, energetic in the gallop due to his powerful lower body.
“He has the ability to see when he has to break into the rival area.
And he has a lot of nerve.
He is unconscious, in a good way, ”says Cuesta from Wuhan.
From there he watched his double on television in the last league game against Betis, Vaseline included to resolve a one-on-one against the goalkeeper.
“He has come and go, work, class and goal, but above all great mental strength.
When, with the subsidiary, he went through a low point and had to be on the bench, he did not stop training as well as his body allowed him.
Until he leveled up.
Reaching the elite as he is doing is only within the reach of the privileged ”,
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