In the intelligently structured business that football has become at the level of the biggest and most powerful clubs, a significant field of activity lies in what largely remains invisible to the wider public. As a result, a deeply ingrained perception has formed that the main actors of the football arena are merely one-way consumers of money on a galactic scale.
Blinded by the glare of stars whose €100-million transfers have become a normal and easily digestible occurrence, combined with the race for results, trophies and prestige – often under the burden of ratings, tradition and fan expectations – there is little time left to focus on the production of young players and the costs that come with it.
Many will be surprised by the results of research conducted by the globally recognised CIES, the Football Observatory from Neuchâtel, on the number of “graduates” produced by individual club academies across Europe’s five most important leagues. Barcelona can assemble almost four complete teams made up of players who passed through its school. From the “blaugrana”, 40 players have been counted, ten of whom are currently part of the club’s first team, including Lamine Yamal, Alejandro Balde and Fermín López. Behind Barça is its “classic” rival Real with 35 players. The Madrid club, with its Galácticos versions 1 and 2, long stood as a synonym for paying footballers sums beyond any sense of reality or reason. They have not abandoned that habit at the “Bernabéu” even today, but a “shadow” has been cast over them by clubs from England. Through the fantastic sale of television and digital broadcasting rights, Premier League clubs attracted profit-hungry investors from various continents, and soon emissaries of petro-monarchies also landed on the Island “on a red carpet”, creating turmoil on the football market, sparing no dollars in order to use football as a global media platform to reshape the dominant image of their countries worldwide.
Breaking into the Top 10 of the newly published CIES study were also Paris Saint-Germain, Rennes, Chelsea, Real Sociedad, Manchester United, Arsenal and Manchester City.
It is not that gold-plated football virtuosos, freshly arrived from the Sambadrome, did not dance on the grass of “Camp Nou”, but Barcelona represents continuity in creating footballing future and power. The fact that manager Hans Flick today considers fielding a team of 11 players developed entirely within the club’s own academy in a La Liga match is nothing other than the legacy of Johan Cruyff. The legendary Dutch footballer and one of the greatest thinker-practitioners the game has ever known was, in 1979, one of the founders of Barcelona’s youth academy. At that time, La Masia – a Catalan term for a country house or farm – changed its purpose, transforming from a department of club administration into a boarding school that would house talented children from Spanish cities identified by Barça’s talent-spotters (today popularly referred to as scouts).
La Masia did not merely become a symbol of a playing philosophy rooted in the total football of Rinus Michels and his best pupil Cruyff; La Masia evolved into a distinct footballing path in which home-grown players are at the centre. The fruits of such an approach were both rich and sweet. When Spain became world champions in South Africa in 2010, nine graduates of Barcelona’s youth academy wore the national team shirt. The same level of awe swept the planet two years later. In November 2012, in a match against Levante (4:0), coach Tito Vilanova had all 11 players on the pitch – students of the new La Masia. Around the same time, the final shortlist for that year’s Ballon d’Or featured classmates – Xavi, Iniesta and Messi.
And so, regardless of fan allegiance, Barcelona’s rise to a leading position in terms of player productivity and their presence in the strongest divisions opens up space for hope in the future of football.
