Man United target Thiago Alcantara is ‘extraordinary’, ‘incredible’ and ‘destined to triumph’: the Spanish view

We can all wax lyrical about football players, but sometimes it is best to look for the opinions of people within the sport who have first hand experience of what it means to compete at the highest level, in order to get a real idea of a player's quality. With that in mind, talkSPORT have found out what the likes of Pep Guardiola, Xavi Hernandez, Vicente del Bosque and more have to say about Manchester United target Thiago Alcantara...

Xavi Hernandez
"Thiago is an extraordinary player, he's not one for the future but the present. He's destined to triumph with Barça.

He has an incredible talent. We already know that. He's an excellent player, and against Bayern [in 2011] we saw that he has that spark of quality that can decide a game."

Andres Iniesta
“He has a huge amount of talent, greater than those of his age-group, to the degree that Vicente del Bosque opted to call him up.”

Pep Guardiola
“He's an incredible kid, competitive, and as you can see he plays football very well. It's lucky that we've found another kid like this from the academy. He has been brilliant, not only in goals but in his defensive work."

Marti Perarnau (Olympic high-jumper for Spain at the 1980 Moscow Olympics, turned respected football journalist)
“We don't know if Thiago will succeed or not if he stays at Barca, but we know what he has done so far and that's a good indicator: he has risen to criticisms with sportsmanship, corrected his errors without making a fuss, learned where his shortcomings are, re-emerged from bad games, and always supported the collective above his own ego, he would do whatever he was asked, including if it meant returning to Barça B to help out.

Thiago is a sober, quiet and intelligent kid. He is simple, caring and selfless. Above all of his other virtues, he's intelligent. He has always played at an age group higher than his own. At 16 he was playing with Barça B, going through the three phases of an academy player's life-cycle quicker than anyone else in the B team (reserve player to rotation, rotation player to maturity, key player to leader)."

Vicente del Bosque
“I have more confidence in him right now, in his present and future, than [a veteran like] Reyes. He's a player that though he grew up in Spain had the option to decide which country he wanted to play for, and we gave him the opportunity to play with us out of sporting merit, and his strong roots in Spanish football.”

United fans, are you desperate to sign Thiago from Barcelona? Let us know what you think of him below...