Football Player's Biography 7: Sergio Busquets

Full name	Sergio Busquets i Burgos
Date of birth	16 July 1988 (1988-07-16) (age 22)
Place of birth	Sabadell, Spain
Height	1.89 m (6 ft 2¹⁄₂ in)
Playing position	Defensive midfielder

Sergio Busquets i Burgos (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈserxjo βusˈkets], Catalan: [βusˈkɛts]; born 16 July 1988) is a Spanish footballer who plays for FC Barcelona and the Spanish national team, as a defensive midfielder.
He was a relatively obscure player when he arrived in FC Barcelona's first team in July 2008, but eventually made a name for himself in a relatively short period of time, reaching the Spanish national team in less than one year after making his professional club début.

Club career

Busquets was born in Sabadell, Barcelona, Catalonia. In 2005, he joined local FC Barcelona's youth ranks, scoring seven goals in 26 matches for the Juvenil A team in his second season. Two years later, he was promoted to the B team under Josep Guardiola, and helped it achieve promotion to the third division, with one goal in his 32 appearances.^[1] In that same season, Busquets would make his first team debut, in a Catalonia Cup match, coming on as a substitute.
On 13 September 2008, Busquets played his first La Liga match, 90 minutes in a 1–1 home draw against Racing de Santander.^[2] During Barcelona's UEFA Champions League match against FC Basel at St. Jakob-Park on 22 October 2008, he scored the second goal in the 15th minute in a 5–0 win.^[3] In early December, in another start, he scored his second goal with Barça in the competition, netting in the 83rd minute of a 2–3 home loss against FC Shakhtar Donetsk.^[4] On 22 December, Busquets signed a contract extension until 2013, with a buy-out clause of €80 million.^[5]^[6]
On 7 March 2009, Busquets netted his first goal in La Liga in a 2–0 home win over Athletic Bilbao. On 27 May, having been regularly used in the league as he competed for the spot with internationals Seydou Keita and Yaya Touré, he also featured in Barcelona's starting XI in the Champions League final, a 2–0 win over Manchester United. With that victory, Carles and Sergio Busquets became only the third father-and-son combo to both have won Europe's top club competition playing for the same team, joining Manuel Sanchís Martínez and Manuel Sanchís Hontiyuelo (won it with Real Madrid) and Cesare Maldini and Paolo Maldini (A.C. Milan).
Busquets' fine form continued in the 2009–10 season,^[7]^[8] with Guardiola preferring him to Yaya Touré as Barcelona's holding midfielder.
In the Champions League semi-final against F.C. Internazionale Milano at Camp Nou on 28 April 2010, Busquets went down to the ground after Thiago Motta had raised his arm and pushed Busquets in the face.^[9] As a result of this action, Motta was shown a second yellow card and sent off. Busquets was subsequently criticised by the media, as well as Motta, for apparently feigning injury.^[10]^[9]^[11]
Busquets was again everpresent for Barcelona in 2010–11, even playing as a central defender on occasion. On 27 January 2011, he signed a contract extension with Barcelona, keeping him at the club until 2015; the buyout clause was increased to €150 million.^[12] On 8 March, playing at centre back, he scored an own goal from a corner kick against Arsenal, in the season's Champions League round of 16, levelling the score at 1–1. Barcelona eventually won the game 3–1 (and 4–3 on aggregate).^[13]

International career

On 11 October 2008, Busquets earned his first cap for Spain's under-21, in their 2009 UEFA European Under-21 Football Championship qualification play-offs first leg match, against Switzerland. He scored in the 17th minute but Spain lost the match 2–1, eventually emerging victorious 4–3 on aggregate.
On 6 February 2009, he was called-up to the senior squad for the friendly against England, on 11 February.^[14] Busquets finally made his debut for La Furia Roja on 1 April 2009, in a 2010 FIFA World Cup qualifier against Turkey, playing 16 minutes in a 2–1 win in Istanbul, after replacing David Silva. Four days earlier, he had been named as a substitute when the same sides met in Madrid, where Spain ran out 1–0 winners, with a goal from team mate Gerard Piqué.
Busquets was selected by manager Vicente del Bosque for the finals in South Africa, assuming the holding midfielder role naturalized Brazilian Marcos Senna had previously had in the conquest of UEFA Euro 2008: he played all the matches and minutes for the eventual World champions (save for the last 30 minutes of the 0–1 group stage loss against Switzerland).

Honours

Personal

Busquets' father, Carles, was also a footballer, having played as goalkeeper for Barcelona for several years during the 1990s, although almost exclusively as a backup.