Viva Barca
Ever since the notorious La Masia academy was founded, or rather, put to its modern use of housing and training young football prodigies, it was dubbed to be one of or even the very best educational residence for young players – Xavi, Iniesta, Busquets, Pique and Lionel Messi, to name just a few of them. At one point, namely in 2010, all three finalists for the best player in the world (Ballon d’Or) were La Masia graduates – Xavi, Iniesta and Lionel Messi. One other instance of La Masia’s total domination in the world of football is the fact that in 2009 Barcelona managed to lift the most prestigious trophy in club competitions, the Champions League trophy, with a team consisting of 8 homegrown players out of the starting 11! Similarly, Spain won the World Cup in 2010 with 9 La Masia players in the squad, 6 of which were in the starting 11 line-up. Since then things have gone silent for the Catalan youth system. Last La Masia “product” to make it big time is Lionel Messi, and the lad is now 30 years of age (Busquets, who arrived in 2008, is also a distinguished player, but not on the same level!). It’s been a while since we could last call Messi the “wunderkind” or the young prodigy, even though he is currently arguably the best player to ever walk the football pitch. This article will try to analyze why is it that Barcelona youngsters are not succeeding at promotion to the first squad anymore and why has the board overlooked them (or maybe forgotten about them) as of late.
When Barcelona, earlier this year, announced that a young defender Marlon Santos, who is La Masia’s product, will be joining the first team in the upcoming season, fans around the globe were thrilled. Nonetheless, to say that it raised a couple of eyebrows would be pretty mild. It was not because people don’t think much of the kid, it’s because it really has been a while since a La Masia graduate has made it to the “big stage”. Sure, people like Carles Alena and Gerard Gumbau have had their taste of La Liga before but it was mostly due to the thinness of the Barca bench at that time, caused by a series of injuries. Carles Alena has a record of 4 games played throughout the 2016/2017 season (3 La Liga, 1 Copa del Rey), and succeeded at scoring 1 goal for the team. In his 3 La Liga appearances he accumulated a total of 90% pass accuracy, which stands out as his most impressive stat in the calendar year, along with the one goal scored. 15 times has Carles found himself on the Barca bench in that season, but was subbed in only 3 times which totaled to 40 minutes played overall. All in all this is not really enough to get a proper evaluation of the kid. Gerard Gumbau, on the other hand, had a pretty good spell with the first team, totaling an impressive number of 14 appearances throughout all of the competitions, including but not limited to the Cup, Champions League and La Liga. 6 of those are in the Champions League, where he always came on as a sub, created 2 chances and averaged 88% pass accuracy. Other players have also had their chances but were limited to one or two appearances or mostly warmed the bench. Those include Carbonell, Cardona and Palencia. All of this has led us to believe that Barca B players, or more notably, La Masia players have not been the focus of our recent managers, especially during Luis Enrique’s run with Barcelona (2014-2017). During Guardiola’s, Louis van Gaal’s or even Cruyff’s time, things were a lot different and the focus was elsewhere.
The last player to be fully promoted to the first team (other than Marlon) is Munir – a young forward who excels at great pace and finesse. He played 26 games for Barcelona in La Liga (3 seasons) and scored a total of 4 goals. Unfortunately that proved not to be enough for the striker to stay at the club and he was put on loan to Valencia shortly after. Munir is set to return to Barca for the 2017/2018 preseason but his future at the club is most uncertain as many predict his departure already.
The numbers don’t really lie, and according to them, as seen in the previous paragraph, Barcelona has distanced themselves from La Masia, or rather, they have stopped relying on the academy to produce first team players. Maybe the graduates are not really good enough anymore to be in the first eleven, but since they mostly have good results whenever they go on loans or depart to other clubs, I’d say this is not the case. Munir has accumulated a total of 34 games played (22 as a starter) for Valencia during his loan spell for the club, and has scored 6 goals and assisted 3. One of the goals is also to Barcelona, which he did not celebrate, showing respect to the club that fed him. The stats are not bad but also not good enough for a Barca starter. Still, he is young and needs time so these stats are certainly encouraging moving forward since he is showing potential.
But let’s leave Munir alone for a bit because although he is certainly a quality player, he is not really one that Barca is going to rely upon, at least not for the time being. The player that caused a lot of stir in the water, and a lot of raised eyebrows is Jordi Mboula. Jordi is an 18 year old from Granolles, Spain, who until very recently played as a prolific winger for Barcelona B. He was sold for a sum of 3 million euros to Monaco in an outrageous deal that saw all the Barcelona fans lose their minds. Just to refresh your memory, Mboula is the guy who played a (combined) total of 12 games for Barcelona B (3) and Barcelona UEFA U19 (9), scoring 8 goals and assisting 3. He also competed for the Spain U19 National team, scoring 5 goals in 7 matches – a young prodigy without a shadow of a doubt. Everyone was just waiting for him to join the first team in the upcoming season even, but the board decided to sell him for literally, change, a couple of millions. In two or three years’ time, the board will bid for the same player and will have to splash dozens of millions of euros to get him back home, it’s a guarantee.
After analyzing such a young prospect that is Jordi Mboula, one of the most prolific and promising La Masia players since Lionel Messi, we see that the problem indeed does not lie in the players not being capable of joining the first team due to their inefficiency on the field, but is rather somewhere else. Football is changing, there is no denying that. Could the reason behind La Masia’s recent “blunders” be the fact that small, agile, versatile and speedy players are no longer in demand? Because remember, La Masia’s graduates are all finesse and skill players, not big, broad and strong ones. Sure, there are always exceptions to this rule but as a whole, La Masia is built to produce Messis, not Hulks (Givanildo Viera, not the Marvel’s Incredible Hulk). The recent rise of players like Paul Pogba, Renato Sanches and Marco Verratti is definitely hinting there could be at least a little bit of truth to this. No one is denying that players like Coutinho, Neymar and even Lionel Messi himself, are dying out, it’s just really difficult to rely on a player achieving such a height as the before-mentioned players. When you have a strong and tall midfield, or a midfield that is high on stamina, you are mostly good to go, but a dribbler in the team is more often than not – a gamble. “Why is that?” you may ask. It is mostly because a dribbler has to be good enough to make a difference, and he has to be skilled enough to give enough weight to that difference so it is felt across the pitch. When you have Messi dribbling past 4 or 5 defenders and then serving the ball for Suarez to tap it in, well that is the definition of making a difference on the field. But if you have a mediocre dribbler, he will lose the ball more often than not and you will end up suffering from it. On the other hand, strong and brawny midfielders have a different, arguably easier role to fill; they are the disruptors of the play and having a mediocre disruptor will most likely be less of a blunder than having a mediocre dribbler. Note, however, that his (disruptor) role is more of a team role, as opposed to the dribbler, who mostly operates alone, thus making his job more difficult to execute.
Even if all of that mentioned above is true, I would say it is not the reason for abandoning the youth system. Barca’s style is built on the “tiki-taka” – the famous one-two passing football ethic. The most important aspect of this style is that it does not require your players to be big and strong, although they can be, as long as they are skilled at passing the ball with precision. Maybe it comes down to manager preferences after all. Luis Enrique did give some chances to the young players but never actually put any emphasis on them. Same goes for Martino before him. Ernesto Valverde is the new head of Barca, and the future for the youngsters does look a bit brighter. Reportedly, there are six players who will join the team during the preseason tour, which will determine whether or not they will get a chance in La Liga – Marlon, Palencia, Cucurella, Vitinho, Alena and Ortola.
To conclude, La Masia is still a household name when it comes to “grooming” the young and prolific football players, but the demand in the modern day football is changing rapidly. Muscle and strength are the go to nowadays, instead of agility and technique. Nonetheless, that should not stray us away from looking for youngster in our “backyard” before rushing to the transfer market to look for foreigners. The board made some questionable decisions lately, both with the youth academy and the first team squad, but with the coming of “Txingurri“, “the Ant”, Ernesto Valverde, things are likely to make a twist, hopefully for the better. What is the secret recipe behind the success of La Masia that went missing (or went sour) throughout the years? We do not really know, but what we do now is that it is still out there, alive and functional, but asleep. It only needs a wake-up call. The time is now, unleash the beast.
Domagoj Kostanjšak   |
