I was most looking forward to watching Pedri against Germany, and then, bam, in the 7th minute of the game, he is taken out by Toni Kroos in one tackle. We had crunching tackles before, but with less space, it is impossible to avoid them.

Martin Rafelt made the good point that ‘the physical level in the Premier League is so high that good players don’t survive there’:

[…] I tend to use a simplified model that explains a lot of strange performance development: basic level and playing ability. How high can you play, and how good can you play?

Basic level, aka, how high can you play? What’s your level of speed and strength? How high can you go in basic actions (running duels, aerial duels, picking up loose balls, just keeping the ball under physical pressure, playing simple passes quickly)?

Playing ability, aka, how good can you play? On the given level that you can survive, how effective are you going to be there? How are your decisions, your positioning, and your timing to actually create offensive output? How often can you beat defenders that are evenly matched?

[…]

The Bundesliga, and especially Dortmund, whose players scored the most in the tournament (Euro 2024), can afford to get very smart, talented players who might not have the basic level to consistently survive EPL physicality. (Sancho?, Götze, Lindström, Simons?, etc.)

The EPL is so extreme in their physical selection that this leaves little space for these kinds of players. You end up selecting a lot of strong, fast players who are not necessarily great at knowing what to do but can survive at least. (Benteke or Mudryk, to name two extremes.)

Pedri to me is someone right now that falls into that category of a player with world-class playing ability who doesn’t have the basic level to survive in a physical game. More specifically, a physical game with little space.

As Messi said, there is less space and the game is more ‘tactical’. Lamine Yamal learned that you have to bulk up if you want to survive; even though he is young, just look at a picture of him then and now. Players are prioritizing muscle; you never saw this with Neymar. Bukayo Saka is the new baseline; he is built like a rock.