Defensive midfield will never be the most glamorous of roles on a football pitch.
Sure, occasionally you might get a stylist like Andrea Pirlo playing in front of the back four, but the Italian great would never have sullied himself, or his fabulous hairstyle, with anything you or I might call 'defensive duties'.
However, when a master of the craft is in control of everything, seeing all the traffic moving around them with crystal clarity, there is an understated beauty to it.
Breaking up play, launching attacks, recycling possession, snuffing out opposition attacks - every act coming precisely and rhythmically one after the other.
Rodri was in this zone - a zen pivote - as Manchester City reasserted their authority as the best team in England with an authoritative 1-0 win over their Champions League final tormentors Chelsea.
But as the Spain international passed, pressed and prevented to perfection, memories of that night in Porto left a sour taste.
Infamously, Pep Guardiola opted to select a team without a natural holding player and City frequently found themselves on the wrong end of chaos.
There were other factors in a sharply contrasting affair in west London on Saturday. Where City’s pressing from the front had been scattergun and reckless at Estadio do Dragao, they cloaked Stamford Bridge with suffocating sky blue cohesion.
You can take the temperature of Chelsea by how influential their wing-backs are and match-winner Gabriel Jesus and Jack Grealish gave Marcos Alonso and Cesar Azpilicueta torrid afternoons.
Thomas Tuchel’s decision not to select a like-for-like replacement for Mason Mount marked a rare and potentially significant misstep in his Chelsea tenure. The hosts missed their England playmaker far more than City missed the similarly absent Ilkay Gundogan.
Tuchel’s ultra-conservative approach robbed his team of the opportunity to make the kind of statement they seemed poised to make, but it did leave Rodri facing up to three defensive midfield counterparts.
In the first half, he completed 41 of 42 passes and gained possession seven times. Between them, N’Golo Kante, Jorginho and Mateo Kovacic made 40 passes and gained possession on five occasions.
Rodri joined City a year after Guardiola failed to bring in Jorginho from Napoli. He has probably been about as popular as you would expect a backup option to be with supporters ever since.
Even in Porto, the outcry was focused more upon why club captain Fernandinho did not start. No one really missed Rodri, especially with Kante on such imperious form.
And yet, this weekend the France star was unable to lay a glove on City’s holder before being substituted with an hour gone.
By that stage, Rodri had made a timely interception and launched an attack from which Kevin De Bruyne had a shot blocked. Grealish then curled wide and the pressure continued to rumble until Jesus netted his deflected winner.
Jesus should have had his and City’s second when Thiago Silva cleared off the goalline after the hour. That was another attack with Rodri at source, reclaiming the ball and supplying City’s quintet of attackers with the slings and arrows.
He’s had to take plenty of those since joining from Atletico Madrid in 2019, but Rodri’s dominant display at Stamford Bridge should lay the “Plodri” nickname to rest for good, as well as any lingering ghosts from Porto - even if we’re all still entitled to wonder what might have been.
Who do you think was City's man of the match against Chelsea? Follow City Is Ours Editor Dom Farrell on Twitter to get involved in the discussion and give us your thoughts in the comments section below.
