Time for Yerry Mina to shine for Barcelona against Celta Vigo?

Yerry Mina’s time at Barcelona has been pretty frustrating and a bit confusing. He arrived in January with his transfer seemingly brought forward because Javier Mascherano was leaving.

Barca did have an option on Mina, but you get the distinct feeling they’d much rather have signed him in the summer rather than the winter.

In any case he arrived and made us all smile as he took off his boots at his unveiling and walked barefoot on the Camp Nou pitch with a gigantic smile. He threw in a few dance moves and most of us were smitten already with the charismatic Colombian.

Photo by David Ramos/Getty Images

Since then though he’s barely featured. He made his debut in February in the Copa del Rey win over Valencia when he came on for the last seven minutes for Gerard Pique.

His La Liga debut swiftly followed as he started the 0-0 draw with Getafe and he did pretty well. Defensively he was solid and he was a little unlucky not to score with a couple of headers.

But since then nothing, nada, not a sniff of first-team action. In fact he’s rarely even in the squad at all. Is he that terrible in training?

Ernesto Valverde was quizzed about Yerry Mina during his pre-match press conference ahead of the Celta game and kind of gave an explanation as to why he’s not played.

“All I will say is that he came at a bad time. We have four defenders and I trust all of them. Maybe he might get some minutes against Celta. He’s a good defender, but Vermaelen is also very good.”

Mina is obviously Barcelona’s fourth choice centre-back but he could probably have expected more minutes since arriving, particularly as Gerard Pique has practically hobbled through recent games.

However, it looks as though Mina’s wait for more first-team minutes might be about to end. Pique has finally been rested and is out of the squad for tomorrow’s match while Mina is in. Is this finally his time to shine? Let’s hope so.