The making of Pablo Sarabia: From ‘secondary player’ to a creative force in the Premier League

A question: who is the 2023-24 Premier League’s leading creator of chances?

Martin Odegaard? James Maddison? Trent Alexander-Arnold? Bruno Fernandes?

Wolverhampton Wanderers fans might even guess at Pedro Neto.

All are close, but the answer is actually Pablo Sarabia.

It should not come as a major surprise, given that a little over a year ago, the attacking midfielder was training daily alongside Lionel Messi, Neymar and Kylian Mbappe at Paris Saint-Germain, and a couple of months before that, he was in Spain’s squad at the World Cup.

Yet the 31-year-old’s rise from the Wolves substitutes’ bench to the top of the Premier League’s chance-creation charts has happened largely under the radar.

“The Premier League has gone in such a way that it’s full of extreme athletes who are powerful or fast,” says Wolves head coach Gary O’Neil. “You don’t see quite so many players of the Pablo Sarabia type anymore — players who survive and thrive purely through their intelligence and technical ability.

“It can be difficult in such a physical league to impact football matches but his intelligence, his work rate and his quality with his left foot are such that he finds ways to affect things, and he opens up things for other people to show their strengths.”

Among players with 900 or more Premier League minutes this season, nobody can beat Sarabia’s rate of 3.4 chances created per 90 minutes.

(minimum 900 minutes played)

Having started the season as a frustrated spectator on the bench in most Wolves matches, Sarabia has made himself an indispensable member of late-summer appointment O’Neil’s team.

After a career spanning more than a decade, including spells in some of Europe’s biggest leagues and with some of the continent’s biggest clubs, Sarabia is now making his mark on the Premier League.

Sarabia has long seemed destined for the top.

He was signed as a 12-year-old by Real Madrid, having played at the Madrid-based Escuela de Futbol Madrid Oeste Boadilla del Monte academy, and despite his obvious physical limitations — even today he is 5ft 8in (174cm) — was a star from the outset.

“I remember him as a great player, who had a very good left foot and put the ball where he wanted it,” recalls Denis Cheryshev, the Russia international winger, who was also recruited by Madrid at that age. “He is also a player you always want to see play because of his quality, even though we are no longer together. I hope he continues like that.”

In January 2010, aged 17, Sarabia made his debut for Real Madrid Castilla, the club’s reserve team, in the Spanish third tier alongside players including current Madrid captain Nacho and now 28-cap Spain striker Rodrigo, who moved to Leeds United signed for £27million from Valencia in 2020. His close friends at Madrid’s academy included defender Dani Carvajal, who has gone on to make more than 400 appearances for their senior side, winning three La Liga titles and five Champions Leagues.

Sarabia captained Spain as they won the Under-19 European Championship in 2011 (Stringer/AFP via Getty Images)

For Sarabia, the step up from Castilla to the Madrid first team did not happen — despite a late cameo in a Champions League game against Auxerre in December 2010, in which he came on for Cristiano Ronaldo — and in summer 2011, he made a move across the Spanish capital to Getafe in a transfer that kickstarted his career.

”He was very young and at the beginning, it was a bit difficult for him because there were veterans,” says former goalkeeper Jordi Codina, who made the same move two years earlier. “But little by little, he was getting minutes. We lived close to each other, we both came from Real Madrid, and I tried to play the role of a father, and I got together a lot with him and (full-back) Sergio Escudero.

“At night, we sometimes got together to watch football. I played the role of father but Pablo was talkative; he liked to joke around. He was a very open guy and one of the (main) guys in the dressing room.”

Getafe were among the smallest clubs in La Liga, with attendances regularly below 10,000, but they provided Sarabia with a platform to prove he belonged in the Spanish top flight. He made 146 appearances across five seasons, scoring 15 times and registering 20 assists, including seven goals in 2015-16 — his last year before moving on to Sevilla.

“He was a hard worker and he helped new people,” says Vicente Guaita, a former Getafe team-mate. “As a player, you could already see that he had a different quality to everyone else. That’s why Sevilla and PSG took him. Few can say that they have played and won in those teams but when a player is different like Pablo, he becomes differential, no matter which team he is in.”

Sarabia made his La Liga debut with Getafe (Gonzalo Arroyo Moreno/Getty Images)

”When he came to Getafe, we all knew about his potential,” adds Codina. “But at the beginning, he was 18-19 years old and he had to go little by little. He was gaining confidence and, in a couple of years, he was fundamental in Getafe.

“I remember that the group in those years was very good and we had a lot of fun. He was very skilful, with an exceptional left-foot shot and was quick and skilful. He is a player who can play on the right, on the left, in the midfield; very complete in attack.”

Getafe’s 2015-16 relegation meant the end of Sarabia’s time in his native Madrid as Sevilla offered him the chance to remain in La Liga. That move propelled him into the high echelons of the division with fourth-, seventh- and sixth-place finishes in his three seasons, which brought 151 appearances, 43 goals and 38 assists, as well as a runners-up medal in the 2017-18 Copa del Rey.

Sarabia scored 23 goals with 17 assists in what proved his final season, catching the attention of one of Europe’s wealthiest clubs.

In 2019, Paris Saint-Germain were looking for some low-cost deals, and Sarabia fitted the bill.

The big-spending Ligue 1 champions paid around £15million to take Sarabia to the French capital, where he found himself alongside Neymar, Mbappe, Angel Di Maria and Edinson Cavani, among others. At a club already famous for big-name signings, Sarabia was a lower-profile arrival, despite that impressive farewell season for Sevilla.

“It was definitely coherent with PSG’s state and strategy at the time,” says Alexandre Aflalo, who writes about the club for the French newspaper Le Parisien.

“Sarabia’s signing came two years after the record transfer window of 2017, with Neymar and Mbappe joining the club, and for two or three years after that, PSG had to sell a lot and be a lot more clever with their signings to stay aligned with FFP. It was definitely a couple of more sober years in terms of incoming transfers, and I guess Sarabia was a perfect fit in that: a good player who just got out of a great season and (was) quite cheap.

“I think those who follow La Liga were quite excited by the transfer since Sarabia just had the best season of his career but for most followers and fans, it was a complete discovery and, most of all, he was never going to be more than a secondary player in the team.”

Sarabia (left) with Neymar and Lionel Messi in July 2022 (Toshifumi Kitamura/AFP via Getty Images)

The move to France brought Sarabia trophies and medals — three Ligue 1 titles, two French cups and a runners-up medal from the 2020 Champions League, where he was an unused substitute in the 1-0 final defeat against Bayern Munich — but a lack of game time, with just 29 starts and 64 appearances overall in Ligue 1 across four seasons.

“He was what we call ‘un second couteau’ (a second knife; a supporting act) in French,” says Aflalo. “With Neymar, Mbappe, Di Maria, Mauro Icardi and even Julian Draxler on the team, he was never expected to be a starter, but he was supposed to be that good player who could perform whenever he got on.

“He still pulled out some good performances — for example, his goal against Real Madrid (back at the Bernabeu) in November 2019 — but obviously he made an impact that was only as good as the number of minutes he played, which was not that much.”

The arrival of Messi at PSG in the summer of 2021 put another major star between Sarabia and a first-team place, and led to him leaving for Portugal’s Sporting Lisbon on loan.

That deal resulted in the most prolific season of his career, with Sarabia racking up 15 goals and five assists from 29 league appearances as Sporting finished as runners-up domestically behind Porto. It put Sarabia back in the minds of European football fans but, with Sporting unable to finance a permanent move, he returned to Paris the following pre-season to find himself back in a familiar situation.

“Obviously, when a player has a good loan in another club, you’re curious to see him come back, and his summer of 2022 with PSG was great,” says Aflalo. “But ultimately, you’re always waiting on those players to perform in the big competitions. And last season, with Mbappe, Messi, Neymar… it was impossible for another attacker to get a place in this team.

“He was never going to get a bigger role at PSG, especially last season, due to this competition in the attacking role. It was just the sane decision for both parties to just let him go.”

By January last year, Sarabia’s frustration at PSG was growing — and one of his former managers was looking for players to help with his latest project.

Sarabia had played under Julen Lopetegui in Real Madrid’s academy sides and for Spain’s youth teams, and they were reunited for a few weeks at Sevilla in summer 2019 before his move to France. As soon as he was appointed by Wolves in November 2022, with the club bottom of the Premier League, Lopetegui identified Sarabia as a player who could be handy in the rescue mission he’d taken on.

Midway through that winter window, Wolves did a deal for a cut-price £4.4million fee and Sarabia swapped the glitz of Paris and rubbing shoulders with some of the biggest stars in world football for a relegation battle in the West Midlands.

“It was amazing to play with Messi, Mbappe and Neymar, and a very good experience, but for me, the most crucial thing is to feel important in the team,” he told UK newspaper The Daily Telegraph shortly after his arrival. “I prefer to be at another team to feel that togetherness, to be part of it and be a member of the team and a family, rather than just a collection of individuals.”

Despite their previous relationship, Lopetegui was unable to fully unlock Sarabia’s potential as Wolves scrapped successfully for their survival as a top-flight club, and he started just nine league games, scoring once, last season.

There were tentative enquiries from continental Europe last summer but he and Wolves decided he should stay, only for Sarabia to find himself initially frustrated again by a lack of first-team minutes under new coach O’Neil after Lopetegui resigned late in pre-season.

In December, Sarabia had to apologise to O’Neil after appearing to show his frustration at a lack of game time when replying to a fan on social media (Sarabia posted a “thinking face” emoji in response to a fan questioning why he wasn’t sent on from the bench during the 3-2 loss to Fulham on November 27), but his fortunes had already begun to change with a scintillating cameo in the 2-1 win against Tottenham at Molineux in the previous fixture.

Having stepped off the bench on 87 minutes, Sarabia scored a stunning equaliser as the match went into added time — controlling Matheus Cunha’s pass with his right foot before lashing home with his left, all in one fluid motion — before providing a perfect pass for Mario Lemina to score a dramatic winner.

Within weeks, thanks partly to an injury to Pedro Neto, he was a regular in the starting XI and looking happy in a Wolves shirt.

“For me, it is like a family here,” Sarabia told UK broadcaster TNT Sports. He and his wife Carmen had welcomed their first children — twins: a boy and a girl — just weeks after arriving in England.

As he enters the closing stages of his first full season in the Premier League, Sarabia is now a vital cog in O’Neil’s machine: a creative force from the right flank and Wolves’ reliable set-piece taker. And having got a taste for it as a more experienced figure in a young Sporting dressing room, he has emerged as a quiet leader, too.

While Maximilian Kilman wears the captain’s armband and leads by example, and Mario Lemina and Cunha fill the more traditional vocal leadership positions, Sarabia has become an understated but important voice in training and on the pitch, cajoling, encouraging and offering advice to his younger colleagues.

“For me, Sarabia was always a leader,” says former Getafe team-mate Carlos Vigaray. “In spite of his youth, he had a character that was contagious to his team-mates and he always supported the team in bad moments.”

In addition to his position at the top of the per-90 chance creation chart, Sarabia is second only to team-mate Neto when it comes to assists per 90 minutes in the Premier League this season, with the two Wolves colleagues ahead of some of the division’s stellar names.

(minimum 900 minutes played)

Among players with 900 or more minutes, he ranks ninth for chances created in open play and second behind Luton’s Alfie Doughty for chances created from set pieces, adding up to top spot overall.

From being on the outside looking in at the start of the season, Sarabia will now be tough to displace even when O’Neil has all of his attacking options fit.

“It took me a while to figure out how best to utilise Pablo,” says O’Neil. “He had a frustrating spell at the start of the season where he didn’t play anywhere near as much as he wanted to. We had a lot of discussions about why that was and what I felt he needed to do more to impact the team.

“We didn’t always agree on all of it but partly through him, partly through me, we’ve got to a point now where I can see that he can impact Premier League games unbelievably well for us — especially certain ones and certain moments that really suit him.

“It is difficult to get that many attacking players in the team if they’re not really diligent. Pablo is much better now than he was without the ball, and with the ball we can all see what he can do.”

(Top photos: Getty Images)