COLUMN: Mixing business with pleasure – Las Palmas, producing the next Pedri and finding bigger full-backs

There’s the effervescently charming Javier Bardem, the heel-sharp global designer Manolo Blahnik, just as elegant with his words is Benito Galdos Perez, and give him a ball, David Silva makes football all balance and poetry too. The pattern is not immediately apparent, but all of them hail from the Canary Islands. All made their name elsewhere, be it Madrid, New York or Manchester. Las Palmas have no intention of changing that.

Pedri, an early graduate from their academy at 17 when he moved to Barcelona, is the latest talent to bring notoriety to the archipelago, timidly promoting projects to clean up the ocean, and ensure children have access to fresh Canarian bananas. The next one is Alberto Moleiro, now 20, and barely blinking in his first year in La Liga.

“When we sell a Pedri, then we have Moleiro now, that’s the way we are. When Moleiro goes, there will be another,” says Sporting Director Luis Helguera. In the media landscape of broad brushstrokes and vague hints, Helguera’s honesty that Moleiro is leaving, you sense in the not too distant future, catches your ear with an unusual abrasiveness.

Moleiro is very clear that he does not play like Pedri, but he is on course to follow him off the islands and into the top level of football. The transparency about it is disarming, and Helguera has no trouble looking their position in the football pyramid in the eye.

“It’s also true that we are a selling club, and it’s good to see players like Pedri playing for Barcelona. Pedri, Vitolo, Jonathan Viera, Roque Mesa, there are a lot of them, they represent us elsewhere. We’ve always done it. We’re not to worried about it, we’re more concerned with our academy development, player development, how we work with them… We understand