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Gerard Piqué

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Gerard Piqué
Personal information
Full name Gerard Piqué Bernabeu
Height 1.92 m (6 ft 3+1⁄2 in)
Position(s) Centre Back
Team information
Current team FC Barcelona
Number 3
‡ National team caps and goals, correct as of 20 August 2008, 11:07 (UTC)

Template:Spanish name 2 Gerard Piqué Bernabeu (born 2 February 1987 in Barcelona) is a Spanish footballer playing for Spanish club FC Barcelona, mainly as a central defender.

Club career

Early career

Piqué started his career at FC Barcelona's youth teams, but before he signed his first professional contract with the club decided to join Manchester United. The Premiership side did not pay a fee for Piqué as he was too young to have a professional contract. Pique then went on to dominate the Premier League and played a crucial role in the team's success in the Champions League, scoring three wonder goals.

Manchester United

Piqué made his debut for Manchester United in October 2004 in the Football League Cup, as a late replacement for John O'Shea, in a 3-0 victory at Crewe Alexandra. He made his full debut on 29 March 2006 against West Ham, in a Premier League game at Old Trafford playing at right-back, as Gary Neville was unavailable due to injury.

His performances, most notably in the reserve team, earned him a new contract which he signed in February 2005 to run until the summer of 2009. On 4 August 2006, however, Spanish first division side Real Zaragoza secured Piqué on a season-long loan. The conditions of the loan involved Piqué having to feature in at least 20 games for the Aragonese outfit, which he did, as he made 22 first team appearances in a successful spell alongside Argentine Gabriel Milito (who would sign with Barça for 2007-08), either as a stopper or a holding midfielder.

On 5 May 2007, it was announced that Piqué would be staying at Old Trafford for the following season. Sir Alex Ferguson was supposed to assess Pique's form on May 6 2007 at La Romareda prior to a meeting where the two parties would discuss Pique's future prospects with the club. However, Ferguson was unable to appear on account of airline difficulties.

Piqué's return to Old Trafford saw him make nine league appearances during the 2007–08 season. He scored on his first start in the Champions League, in a 4-0 home win against Dynamo Kiev, played on 7 November 2007, as Piqué scored the first of Manchester United's 4 goals in that match. In doing so, he became the 450th player to score at least one goal for the club. Following his first goal for the club, Piqué got his second in an away match to A.S. Roma, on 12 December.

Barcelona return

On 27 May 2008, Piqué signed a 4-year contract with FC Barcelona with a €50 million buy-out clause. Barcelona paid an undisclosed fee for the player, rumoured to be around £7 million. He expressed his joy at re-signing with boy-hood club, although he admitted he had enjoyed his spell at Manchester United; "I am very happy to be back, I didn't think I would be here again but this is very good for me. Manchester is a great club and I enjoyed winning things". To play with world class players has helped me and now I want to continue this at Barça".

International career

Piqué was a member of the Spanish under-19 side that won the European Championship in Poland. In a 2-1 final win against Scotland, Piqué put in a strong performance in defence, hitting the crossbar with a header, and also providing his team's second goal for striker Alberto Bueno.

Subsequently, he played in the 2007 FIFA U-20 World Cup, starting all six of Spain's matches and scoring a goal in the team's come-from-behind 4-2 victory over Brazil in the round of 16. However, Piqué missed the deciding penalty against the Czech Republic and Spain were eliminated at the quarter-final stage.

Personal life

The fact that Piqué's maternal surname is Bernabéu has led to some confusion regarding his origins, as he shares his name with the former Real Madrid president Santiago Bernabéu after whom the club's home stadium is named. In fact, the name Bernabéu is of Catalan origin and well spread in Barcelona. Piqué (another typical Catalan surname) is a grandson of the celebrated former vice-president of FC Barcelona, Amador Bernabéu.

Piqué is in a relationship with 21-year old model turned Bollywood actress and Miss Universe UK 2008 Lisa Lazarus. She represented United Kingdom at the Miss Universe 2008 final in Vietnam on 14 July 2008.

Honours

England Manchester United

 Spain

Club statistics

Template:Football player statistics 1 Template:Football player statistics 2 |- |2004–05||rowspan="3"|Manchester United||rowspan="3"|Premier League||0||0||1||0||1||0||1||0||3||0 |- |2005–06||3||0||2||0||2||0||0||0||7||0 |- |2007–08||9||0||0||0||0||0||3||2||12||2 Template:Football player statistics 2 |- |2006–07||Real Zaragoza||La Liga||22||2||4||1||0||0||0||0||26||3 |- |2008–09||FC Barcelona||La Liga||10||0||1||0||0||0||5||0||16||0 Template:Football player statistics 312||0||3||0||3||0||4||2||22||2 Template:Football player statistics 432||2||5||1||0||0||5||0||42||3 Template:Football player statistics 535||2||7||1||3||0||7||2||64||5 |}

References

  1. "Crewe 0-3 Man Utd". BBC Sport. Retrieved May 27. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  2. "Zaragoza's Pique: My future is with Man Utd". ontheminute.com. Retrieved January 30. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  3. Ben Hibbs (2005-04-05). "Pique set for OT return". ManUtd.com. Retrieved 2008-05-18.
  4. "All Goalscorers In All Competitive Matches". StretfordEnd.co.uk. 2007. pp. page 5 of 5. Retrieved 2007-11-08. {{cite web}}: |pages= has extra text (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  5. Piqué comes back home
  6. Man Utd defender Piqué to join Barcelona
  7. "Spain-Brazil Match Report". fifa.com. Retrieved 2008-04-02.
  8. Miss UK's sexy pageant plea
  9. "Bumper Go Figure: Season In Numbers". Football365.com. 2008-05-12. Retrieved 2008-05-25.

External links

FC Barcelona – current squad


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