Gavi Mocks Pedri After Going Shirtless: Now He’s Even Worse and Quite a Liar

Just three years ago, one Barcelona star said his closest friend in the dressing room would never dare do a certain thing because he was far too shy. Times have changed. The friend has finally done it, and then fired back at his teammate with mocking comments that have Blaugrana fans laughing.

The young world champion did not stop at breaking through his shyness. He aimed his jokes straight at another of the team’s stars, calling him “quite a liar”, before revealing how much his personality has changed over the last two years despite the brutal injuries that have hit his career.

The player in question is Gavi. The Barcelona midfielder appears shirtless on the cover of the September 2026 issue of Men’s Health, following in the footsteps of his friend Pedri, who did the same in October 2023, according to Spanish outlet Sport.

Back then, Pedri appeared on the cover of the same magazine with a surprisingly muscular physique that fans are not used to seeing on the pitch, where he looks like a slight player. In the interview that accompanied the shoot, he said his Andalusian friend would never dare pose without a shirt for any magazine because he was too shy.

Gavi responded to Pedri’s old photo in his own cheeky way: “He was nowhere near like that… And that was two years ago, now he’s even worse,” adding that his teammate is “quite a liar”.

Despite calling Pedri a liar, Gavi admitted his friend was right about him: “That’s true, I’m quite shy about some things. Not about others, but a cover with no shirt on… that makes me more uncomfortable. There he’s not lying.”

Gavi went on: “In the end, I ended up doing it. Now I do things I wouldn’t have done two or three years ago. I was much shyer about certain things. A couple of years ago I probably wouldn’t be here talking,” a confession that shows how much he has matured.

The friendship between the two began in 2021, when Gavi stepped up to a first-team squad that looked nothing like today’s, with names such as Adama Traore, Aubameyang and Luuk de Jong. Pedri had arrived a year earlier and shared Lionel Messi’s final season at the club.

The banter between them is obvious. This season both dyed their hair after winning the World Cup, Pedri platinum blond and Gavi pink, prompting Lamine Yamal to joke in one of the first training sessions: “Behind me come my strawberry and cream lollipops.”

Gavi’s career has not gone the way he hoped after his promotion to the first team. He suffered a complete rupture of the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee, with associated damage to the lateral meniscus, which kept him out for almost a year in 2023. Then in 2025 he injured the medial meniscus in the same knee and was sidelined from September until March 2026.

None of that stopped him. Over the summer he convinced coach Luis de la Fuente to take him to the last World Cup, which ended with Spain winning their second star.