Pep Guardiola was particularly talkative as he sat down on Friday to face questions ahead of Manchester City's opening game with West Ham.
He bounded in five minutes earlier, professed his love for a journalist and happily answered at length on anything that came his way - especially Rodri.
City's manager had already beamed about the club record signing's impact during the pre-season tour and went further this week, claiming that it would go down as one of the best pieces of business from the club.
Pressed on such claims, Guardiola was positively giddy.
Rodri has it all, is a far better holding midfielder than he ever was and can be the future for both City and Spain. If the manager can be prone to exaggeration, it should also be noted that he spends most of his time playing down how good certain players or the team are or can be. Such praise for Rodri is not hollow and is all the more remarkable for who he is effectively replacing in the team - Fernandinho, someone that Guardiola has said can play all in ten positions.
The former Atletico midfielder has had a steady pre-season building up awareness with David Silva and Kevin De Bruyne and gave his best performance yet on his Premier League debut.
From the first whistle, he popped up wherever the ball was - a regular output for Ederson on the edge of the box, arriving on cue to clear the ball or spraying passes forward for those ahead of him to run onto.
It was not a perfect performance; twice he was caught on the edge of his own box and it was only his strength that helped recover the situations. But both of those parts are why City rate him so highly in that he plays on the edge and has more of a physical presence than almost all of his teammates.
Guardiola believes his experience at Atletico will be of great benefit and when the Spaniard was knocked down by a stray arm from Michail Antonio in the first half, if there was one voice inside his head questioning his welcome to English football there was probably also Diego Simeone urging him to get up and get on with the game.
Rodri will surely improve and cut out the mistakes as he gets more used to his league and his team, but if he is this omnipresent already no wonder he has his manager purring.
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