Sergio Busquets didn't expect to last this long. More than a decade ago, he predicted that he would retire when he turned 30. But when he finally announced in September that he would be hanging up his boots at the end of the season at Inter Miami, he did so as a 37-year-old defensive midfielder who still somehow never leaves the field of one of the best teams in MLS.
He could play his final game this weekend if Miami loses the conference semifinals to Cincinnati on Sunday.
“For me it's a shame because I think he's still an active player who can continue to give a lot to the club. We can continue to enjoy the level he has,” said his manager Javier Mascherano, who was once forced to become a centre-back when he couldn't beat the young Busquets in Barcelona's midfield.
What still makes Busquets so good? The only glaring flaw in his game is that he is old and immobile, practically a Methuselah by midfield standards. But its advantages are more subtle: a hundred small decisions per match that you have to rewind several times to fully appreciate. How anonymous blogger's wife As you know, look at Busquets and you will see the whole game.
“I am not and never have been an athletically fast player,” Busquets admitted on Catalan radio a few years ago. Like everything else about him, it was elegantly understated. According to data from Gradient sportno MLS midfielder has covered less total distance per 90 minutes this season or covered less ground at speeds faster than a run. Although his sprint still reaches a respectable 19.6 mph, he handles the gears like an old hatchback, accelerating slower in the first 10 meters than any outfield player in the league.
Busquets' secret has always been that his brain is faster than his opponent's legs. “I have a position where you can’t move all over the field,” he said on a Catalan radio show. “You need to think more than run.”
Watch him play and you'll see his head moving more than his body, turning and scanning, recognizing the next play before it even unfolds. His movements are short but purposeful, always slightly anticipating the action, entering space just as it opens or closes just before a turn. He thinks about possession and possession at the same time.
“In defense, positioning is everything,” Busquets once said said. “More important than just stopping a counter-attack when it happens, you need to prevent it from starting. It's more about tactical insight than physical dominance. You need to know exactly where to be on the pitch at all times.”
This is more true than ever in his final season. IN Skill CornerIn advanced statistics, defensive indicators in which Busquets remains above average have proactive names: “destroy or rebuild”, “stop or reduce danger”. He knows better than anyone that he needs to put out troubles, otherwise he will have to struggle to make up for them.
Youth and athleticism may be fleeting, but ball handling never gets old. “He could just walk around and dictate matches. He didn't feel pressured,” Busquets' former Barcelona teammate Cesc Fabregas gushed on the podcast. “You could push him as hard as possible and he would do unexpected things.” The internet loves videos of Busquets' signature move, in which he shows opponents the ball and then yanks it away at the last second, changing direction just in time to leave would-be pressers confused.
His comfort under pressure allows him to choose the pace of his game. He is known for his one-touch passes in tight spaces, but is just as likely to linger on the ball and let the play unfold in front of him. “It may seem like I waited too long to play the pass, but I'm just waiting to see if the options change. They usually do,” he said. “I play the way I am. I don't panic, I'm patient.”
How can data measure this? Is it the ability to always make the right decision? The simplest metric is volume: his 70 passing attempts per game in MLS His regular-season ranking is near the top of his position, which is a sign of the confidence of his teammates, but the advanced stats could go further.
According to American Football AnalysisBusquets is in the 94th percentile among MLS midfielders this season in how much his passes exceed expected completion percentage, and in the 93rd in how much each pass increases his team's chances of scoring.
No midfield passer who was more accurate than him would be more dangerous, and no one more dangerous would be more accurate.
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SkillCorner's off-ball data tells a similar story: When blocked by opponents, Busquets ranks near the top of the MLS rankings for both ball retention and difficult passes under pressure. The only midfield player who beats him on both axes is Darlington Nagbe, another pressure-resistant MLS legend whose 2025 is his final year.
Show Busquets any line of defense and he will find a way to break it. One of his favorite moves is the disguised pass, where he shapes his body as if he's throwing the ball to the side, drawing opponents out, and then rotates his hips to cut them down the middle. According to SkillCorner, he is in the 97th percentile among midfielders for passes through the first line of defense, 98th for the second line and 84th for the last line – not bad for a deep-lying defensive player.
“I really like to avoid inside passes, which is ultimately the hardest thing in my position,” Busquets told by Vincente Del Bosque. “Playing backwards or sideways, bringing pause into the game is fine, but there are times that call for something different.”
Lionel Messi, his teammate at both Barcelona and now Inter Miami, is his favorite target for such incisive passes because “we understand each other well.”
Their connection in Fort Lauderdale is even deeper than when they first met in Barcelona 17 years ago. According to the new Live Score app againwhich I co-founded, Busquets has played 74 progressive passes to Messi this season, more than any other passer-receiver pairing in the league.
Even at the end of a long career that spans virtually the entire modern history of football analytics, there is much about Busquets' game that still eludes easy measurement: his vision and awareness, the technique behind his distinctive defensive crouch and spindly-legged tackles, the way he yo-yos in and out of the Inter Miami back line, changing the shapes of both teams and creating new lanes on the fly.
This slight air of mystery suits Busquets, who has become a legend – your favorite defensive midfielder's favorite defensive midfielder, a player Pep Guardiola famously wanted to impersonate – by learning to disappear completely. “I don’t want people talking about me,” he said. told the Guardian shortly before leaving Barcelona for Miami and the history books.
Good luck stopping it, old man.
