This is how Barcelona secured the signing of Pedri

Pedri has been the breakthrough star of the 2020/21 LaLiga Santander season, with the teenager - who turned 18 on November 25 - having been one of the best pieces of news for Barcelona's fanbase.

He arrived from Las Palmas in the summer, but his signing had been agreed a year before then.

The transfer was completed in just three weeks, thanks in large part to Toni Otero. He had previously worked in Barcelona's La Masia academy and was the technical secretary at Las Palmas at the time.

It was in 2018/19 that Pedri arrived at Las Palmas from Juventud Laguna, initially to play in their Juvenil C youth team.

He'd been close to joining Real Madrid, but that never came to fruition and he got to work while wearing the Canary Islanders' famous yellow jersey, moving up to Juvenil B that same season and ending up at the top Juvenil side before long.

At the club, they quickly realised that Pedri was special and set to work on renewing his contract.

On July 2, 2019, Las Palmas president Miguel Angel Ramirez ordered academy director Tonono and Otero to start negotiating with the player's agents, with pre-season work with the first team to be a feature of the new deal. MARCA reported this four days later and Pedri actually found out about the details of the negotiation by reading this newspaper.

On July 21, Barcelona academy chief Jose Mari Bakero heard from Otero, as Barcelona had been keen on the player for some time and had sent scouts to watch Pedri during pre-season in Marbella.

Six days after that, at the time of the 2019 European Under-19 Championship final, the first conversation between the player's agents and Barcelona took place.

Bakero and Ramon Planes discussed the player and Planes then went to see him in person, a Las Palmas friendly against Real Betis on August 7 at the Estadio Benito Villamarin. The teenager played 63 minutes and Planes wrote a very positive report about him.

The signing then came to fruition in the space of three weeks. It happened so quickly because Las Palmas needed to sell for liquidity reasons and Barcelona wanted to get the deal over the line before other European clubs became competition.

Miguel Angel Ramirez and Patricio Vinayo from Las Palmas' side and Oscar Grau from Barcelona's side closed the deal before the end of that summer transfer market.

The plan was for Pedri to stay and play with the Las Palmas first team for a year, which he did before moving to the Camp Nou in the summer of 2020 and catching the eye of everyone involved in Spanish football.