Pedro Porro lets out a little chuckle before considering his answer. How does he reflect on his time at Manchester City?
It is worth pointing out at this early juncture that, yes, Porro was once a City player. He spent nearly three years on the champions’ books but you would be forgiven for missing it.
He never played for the first team. He never trained with the squad. He never spoke to Pep Guardiola. He never held up the City shirt, grinning, in one of those new-signing announcement photo shoots. He never even made it to Manchester.
City signed the 19-year-old Porro on the final day of the summer transfer window in 2019 from Girona, the Spanish club they own, but he was immediately sent on loan to Valladolid. Porro had his medical in Girona and flew straight to his new club.
Porro’s only visit to the Etihad during his time at City was to play against them in the Champions League for Porto, another club to which he was farmed out on loan. The closest he had got before then was a pre-season training camp with Girona held at the City academy facility next door.
Pedro Porro spent three years on Manchester City’s books – but never made it to the city
Porro never even spoke to Man City boss Pep Guardiola during his time on their books
Instead, he has found himself as a key cog in Ange Postecoglou’s Tottenham Hotspur
He returns to the Etihad on Sunday afternoon, this time as a key cog in Ange Postecoglou’s Tottenham. An ideal moment, then, to consider what happened then and where he is now.
‘It’s not just in football, in any walk of life when you realise that you don’t fit in or not part of something, you have just got to get on with it,’ says Porro of his time at City. ‘You’ve got to follow your own path.
‘One thing I am as an individual, I’m very ambitious and I showed quite a lot of strength to come through that and to get where I am today by following my own path.
‘It’s cool. I have total respect for City. It happens in football, I just probably wasn’t in their plans at that time. When you are a footballer, you have to look for ways out of that situation, whether it’s a move or a loan.’
Porro’s path has brought him here, to Tottenham, who he joined on deadline day in January, initially on loan and then permanently in the summer for £40million. At last, he has found somewhere he belongs. He has been helped to settle, he says, by Christian…