“The Success Behind Barcelona’s Cantera”
By Dominic Vieira
Spain has an astronomical football culture, a culture where most of their players started kicking a ball on the streets. In Barcelona it is easy find a group of “niños” kicking a ball around, this is where it all begins. Barcelona is a football city, everywhere footballs can be found being kicked and almost all of the boys represent a team, from a low level to the top youth divisions. All the boys in Catalunya dream of playing in the Nou Camp one day, but only the most talented and hard working make it happen. FC Barcelona are currently World, European and Spanish champions and one of the key reasons for this great achievement, is their world class players they have. The majority of them were produced through their own cantera, known as ’La Masia’, which is currently the best in the world. Do the names Iniesta, Xavi, Messi and Puyol sound familiar?
In recent times Barcelona’s cantera has been flourishing, each season they manage to promote another highly talented player who immediately makes an impact on the team; this season Pedro has been in flying form. Their current squad consists of 10 home grown players, 8 of whom are Catalan. In comparison to their arch-rivals, Real Madrid’s squad consists 5 home grown players; however, there hasn’t been any indication of young players being launched into the first team. Real Madrid may have the best facilities in the world but instead of benefitting from it, they decide to spend millions on some of the world’s best players.
La Masia is a symbol of FC Barcelona; the excellent and highly successful academy saves the club millions of euros; Barcelona doesn’t need to spend 96 million euros on a winger when they have Lionel Messi. La Masia the home for Barcelona’s youth players who live and grow up in the residence. Many of Barça’s most prolific stars have live there, and it is part of the club’s culture, history and etiquette. What is it that makes La Masia a success? Their style of coaching is like no other, they focus on technique, controlling the game and playing the ball on the ground. If you would watch any of their youth teams play, you would see that they all play a very similar game and style; this makes it easy for the players to adapt easily when they are promoted. From the early ages of 8, the players start learning to play the Barcelona way, the famous tiki-taka game, where the players play with 2 or 3 touches on the ball and always have many direct options to pass the ball; it is a fast style and one which requires high levels of concentration. The club’s philosophy plays a key role in the development of their players, Messi has stated in several interviews “As a kid they teach you not to play to win, but to grow in ability as a player. At Barca, we trained every day with the ball, I hardly ever ran without a ball at my feet. It was a form of training aimed very clearly at developing your skills.”
Unlike other clubs across Europe, FC Barcelona does not have a history of poaching young talented football players and they mainly focus in Catalan based players. rsenal managed to poach Cesc Fabregas and Fran Merida and Manchester United signed up Pique (he returned in 2008) all at young ages; Barcelona has continued to produce, if one player goes, there is always another one ready to step up. Since 1979 La Masia has been the residence for the club’s youth players, but with the Ciutat Esportiva Joan Gamper also fully completed, the boys will have a new modern home to train and live in.
FC Barcelona is not the only club in Spain which has a strong cantera; Bilbao has a prolific one where they follow a strict policy of producing players from the Basque region. The talented players such as Fernando Llorente, Javi Martinez and Iker Muniain have all been successfully launched into the senior squad and grabbed a spot in the starting 11. In recent times, Sevilla and Atlético Madrid have been launching young players into La Liga and been very successful with them. Nonetheless, no other Spanish cantera is anywhere near Barcelona’s standards.
Spain has one of the best national teams; they won the Euro 2008 and are favourites alongside Brazil to win the World Cup in South Africa this summer. Not only do the majority of the players play in Spain but they were also produced at highly successful canteras. Also, unlike other European national teams, Spain has a huge shortlist of players to choose from. Barcelona and Spain have set a high level for youth development, now it is time to see whether a country like England can start spending less, stop poaching European talented players and investing home grown players.
On a final note, even though La Masia focuses in developing Catalan players, Barcelona recently completed the signing of 13 year old Park Sheng Ho. He is dubbed as the “Messi of Korea” and captains the Korean U14 national team. He will join the Spanish giants in the summer and is the first Korean player to represent Barça. Park Sheng Ho is a big sensation in Korea and already has signed a big multi-million contract with Nike. It’s certain we will hear from him again in the future when he is wearing the Barça strip and as its club policy, he will be speaking in Catalan.
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