Cesc Fábregas faces the Barcelona Dream Team he left behind

Arsenal's captain grew up with Piqué and Messi but if he plays tonight he will be their enemy
 

The first time they came for him, he hid out of sight; the second time, there was no escape. It was September 1997 and Rodolf Borrell had come to see a bunch of kids play in Mataró, up the coast from the Catalan capital. For the coach of FC Barcelona Alevín, the club's Under-11s, the trip was familiar – in fact, he had made the same journey two months before – but the lad who caught his eye was not. There was, he noted, a new No4 dominating midfield. "He had everything: vision, athleticism, stamina, speed," Borrell said. "He could pass, he could shoot, and above all his decision-making was spectacular."

Borrell's judgment was spot on, but for one thing – the kid was not so new. The half-time whistle had not even blown when the man who now works with Rafael Benítez at Liverpool approached the Mataró coach, Señor Blai. Where, he asked, had this new lad suddenly come from? Blai looked a little embarrassed, shifted awkwardly and, guiltily, finally came clean. His name, Blai revealed, was Francesc Fábregas Soler, he was "a beast", and he was here in the summer too. "But we were under orders to hide him," Blai admitted. "When you turned up we made him stay in the dressing room."

It was a cunning ruse. By the time Borrell returned in September, Cesc Fábregas had played five times for Mataró. Under Catalan Football Federation rules, he could no longer leave for another team – even if that team was Barcelona. Borrell was not so easily beaten, though, and he eventually offered a compromise: Fábregas would continue playing for Mataró for the rest of the season but would travel to train with Barcelona every Monday, playing the occasional friendly.

So, on 10 November 1997, the 10-year-old set off for the first time from the town of Arenys – divided between Arenys del Mar and Arenys del Munt, Arenys by the sea and Arenys on the hill. His destination: FC Barcelona, 55km away. It became a familiar route. The next season, Fábregas joined formally and began training every day. Ultimately, it became a tiresome route, leading him to take up residence in more celebrated surroundings. If Arenys is famous for its turnip festival, his next home could hardly be more famous for its football.

Every day, a taxi driver called Joan Jiménez picked up Fábregas and Jose Hinojosa. En route, he would collect David Torrejón. Then, as he went through Badalona, Jonathan Pereira and Rafa Vázquez would join the party. They called themselves the Quinta del Taxi, the Taxi Squad, and Fábregas invented his own rhyming sobriquet: "¡Cesc Fábregas Soler, el más guapo del carrer!" Cesc Fábregas Soler, the most handsome kid on the road!

Fábregas's father, a builder also called Francesc, remains proud that, despite getting home past 11pm every night, Cesc always completed his homework. His mother, Nuria, was determined that he would not get behind in his studies – even if former team-mates joke that he was more interested in his classmate María García than the square root of nine. The problem was that, with so much travelling, it was becoming increasingly difficult not to get behind, so Fábregas's parents decided he should live in Barcelona.

When players face their former clubs, the cliche has them "returning home". This time, it's true. Tonight, Fábregas will come up against his boyhood idols, two on the pitch, one on the bench; his first real coach; his best friend and the tiny "mute" kid who turned out to be the world's best player. When he travels to Barcelona next week, the Arsenal bus will roll past the Mini Estadi, where he trained daily, to Camp Nou – the stadium he gazed at through his bedroom window. Just behind is La Masía. His home.

As Arsenal fans stroll to the match, they will pass La Masía, a traditional Catalan farmhouse that stands proudly, rather incongruously, alongside Camp Nou. Caught between life and death, maternity hospital on one side, crematorium on the other, La Masía is home to future players, an indoctrination centre in all things Barça Almost 500 hopefuls have lived there, overlooking the training pitch where, until six months ago, Barcelona's first team trained.

It is the place where, Fábregas says, "I spent the best year of my life"; where exasperated team-mates never slept. "Cesc," complains the Sevilla defender and La Masía contemporary Marc Valiente, "has the worst musical taste ever – he was into La Oreja de Van Gogh." It was from those days that Fábregas likes to remember endless victories in PlayStation Pro Evolution challenges and where Gerard Piqué, his best friend, likes to remind him that, a certain Leo Messi always slaughtered him; where, according to Piqué, Fábregas always shirked table tennis matches – because he knew he would lose.

On the football pitch, he rarely lost. Coached by Borrell and Tito Vilanova, Pep Guardiola's No2, Barcelona were unbeatable. "He played with the Messi generation," Arsène Wenger said last week. "Piqué, Messi, Fábregas … are you really surprised they won games 8-0, 9-0, 10-0?"

"It's hard to find so much talent in one group," Piqué says while Fábregas adds: "I remember that Messi arrived later, at 13 or 14. He was very, very small but very special. He was practically mute and then one day he just suddenly started talking. He's still hardly a big mouth, though."

Piqué was, though. Fábregas remembers him wading in, fists flying, to protect Messi and marauding so far out of defence that Borrell would shout: "If you're going on another excursion, don't forget your backpack!" He claims to have scored more than 50 goals. "Of which," Fábregas says, "40 were from my passes and corners." On one occasion, they were due to parade the Copa Catalunya before a first team game, only they had no cup. Piqué nabbed one from the trophy room and no one was any the wiser.

But if Piqué was the emotional leader, Fábregas was the fulcrum. "We played 3-4-3, like the Dream Team," Piqué recalls. Behind the forwards was Messi. In the middle was Fábregas, playing as a pivote, the axis upon which the team hinged. He was fiercely competitive: he admits that when he was a kid he would "cry and cry and cry" if things did not go his way. Above all, though, he was technical, tidy and totally in control.

He was, locals are proud of insisting, part of a Barcelona heritage – a line of continuity that runs through Guardiola, Fábregas's idol, to his next heroes – Xavi and Andrés Iniesta, the men who describe themselves as "sons of the system", role models for CescFábregas. Iniesta recalls the Barça mantra: "Receive, pass, offer, receive, pass, offer." Fábregas says: "If you've played at Barcelona, you develop a taste for good football."

Xavi and Iniesta, however, were also an obstacle. Progression looked impossible. And in the power vacuum before the 2003 presidential elections, having seen Fábregas star at the Under-17 World Cup, Wenger took advantage. "By the time, I realised," says the then incoming vice-president Sandro Rosell, "it was too late."

"I don't regret going at all," Fábregas has said. "No one wants to leave Barcelona now because everyone gets a chance but when I was there you had to wait so long. And when a professional team offers you a deal at 16 …"

Tonight, Fábregas will be reunited with his oldest friends – whether he is fit enough to play or not. Next week, he will return home. He has tried to skirt it, but the question lingers, hanging over Arsenal: having finished his schooling in England, will he, like Piqué from Manchester United, return for good? Among Fábregas's greatest treasures is a signed Guardiola shirt, given to him at La Masía.

Guardiola dedicated it to "Barcelona's future No4". For years, that was Francesc Fábregas Soler's greatest dream; for years, it has been Arsenal's greatest nightmare.