The praise being sent the way of Bryan Gil in Valencia is so big that it may be getting a little silly now.
Signed on loan from Tottenham Hotspur in the January window, the 20-year-old has impressed in his first minutes with his new club. So much so that there’s already been talk of selling other players to fund a permanent move, and he gets the front page of Wednesday’s edition of Super Deporte.
The cover shouts out ‘MANO DE SANTO’, which literally means ‘Hand of a saint’, and is something said in Spain when a solution appears to a problem.
Inside, there’s a column from Rafa Marin which covers the ‘fever’ building around the Tottenham youngster. Marin paints the picture of Valencia fans being desperate for good players and someone who can make them dream, and, right now, Gil is the saviour.
Valencia face Athletic Club Bilbao in the first leg of their Copa del Rey semi-final on Thursday.
When Gil has previously played at San Mames, he had a run which Super Deporte describe as a ‘Maradonian play’, and they go on to say: ‘The one from Barbate took a ball in the centre of the field and, in the purest style of Leo Messi or Diego Armando Maradona, he dodged rivals in the race in a dizzying slalom of almost 50 metres that only lacked definition in front of goal.’
Similar is now expected tomorrow, with it explained that since arriving from Tottenham, Gil has had a ‘dizzying’ impact.
Valencia, clearly, needed this kind of player to allow them to dream.
Should he carry on with this form then talk of a permanent move will grow, but all the while Valencia fans will surely suspect there’s heartbreak coming not too far down the road.
