Barcelona’s modern success has been achieved via a unique native style. The primacy of
attacking, possession-based football remains the club’s
hallmark and their most distinguishable characteristic. Barcelona have also become synonymous with
academy production, developing players not just fit for firstteam
use, but who are also bred to perpetuate that on-field identity. La Masia, the club’s
youth academy, lies at its heart.
Youth football at Barcelona can be traced back to 1901, when Lluis d’Osso created
- and captained - the club’s second team. A third and fourth team
would also be added and, in 1918, the appetite for what La
Masia would eventually become began to emerge. Joan Rague, a member of Joam Gamper’s board,
promoted the need for further youth and children’s teams.
But La Masia’s roots were really first visible in 1961, during the election of president
Enric Laudet. Laudet had won his mandate on a promise to create
a residential youth academy, with the aim of eventually building
a side ‘formed by boys trained in the style and discipline of the club.’
Laszlo Kubala, the great Hungarian forward and arguably the pre-eminent icon of the era,
had temporarily retired from playing and was installed as
the facility’s head coach in 1961. But, with Kubula promoted to
coaching the first-team within a few months and Luadet’s Barcelona beset by crippling
financial issues, in 1963 it closed due to financial restrictions.
La Masia has come to represent Barcelona’s academy at large, but the term - literally
“The Farmhouse" - refers to a building on part of the land acquired
prior to Camp Nou’s construction. What would eventually
become home to aspiring young players began its second life as a logistical hub during
the new stadium’s construction. After work was completed, the
building lay dormant until 1966 when, after renovations, it was
repurposed as Barcelona’s administrative headquarters.
In its modern form, La Masia owes its existence partly to Jose Luis Nunez, club president
between 1978 and 2000. On taking office, Nunez appointed a
phalanx of coaches to direct the new facility. Jaume Amat, who
was appointed head of youth football, Joan Vila who would later become director of methodology
and remain at the club until 2018, and Oriol Tort,
one of the most famous talent-spotters in the game’s history.
Amat proposed the creation of a residential home for young players who based beyond commuting
distance from the club and Nunez, whose primary ambition
was to establish Barcelona as a global sporting power,
was receptive. With the club’s headquarters re-situated to new promises, La Masía de
Can Planes - La Masia - was proposed as the centre-piece for the
new project. It t would evolve quickly. In July of 1979,
the club’s members - or socios - voted in favour of the creation of
the dedicated football school, agreeing to the redevelopment of the area and also the
construction of a new stadium, the Mini Estadi. The new ground wouldn’t
open until 1982, but by October 1979, La Masia as it
existed in its modern form had been inaugurated. The early months were complicated by political
flux. By November 1979, Jaume Amat had resigned. Josep
Mussons, one of the club’s vice presidents, was appointed Head Of Grassroots soccer with
a brief of improving quality of life within La Masia.
One of his initiatives, controversial at the time but now
universally imitated, was to place an emphasis on traditional education alongside football,
employing teachers assigned to the individual teams.
While the players produced by La Masia would give it its
reputation, the substance of the athletes it would create was also a great source of
pride. Enabled, in part, by Mussons’ reforms.
But while La Masia had its structure, it would have to wait a further decade for its signature
style. That arrived almost by chance.
In 1987, President Nunez’s popularity was under severe threat. The Mutiny of Hesperia
scandal damaged his popularity and left the players demanding
the President’s resignation, Nunez needed a populist move to
recover his position. With the first-team limping towards a fourth placed finish in
La Liga, Luis Aragones - who had only joined the club in place for
Terry Venables earlier in the season - was removed and, in his
place, in May 1988, Nunez appointed Johan Cruyff.
Nunez and Cruyff were adversaries. They had fallen out bitterly at the end of Cruyff’s
final season as a Barcelona player, ironically over the same
tax issue at the heart of Hesperia, but these were desperate times.
Cruyff remained extremely popular and with public sentiment split by the Hesperia episode
and Camp Nou’s attendances in sharp decline, Nunez needed
a unifying figure. It was a move which would change Barcelona
forever. Many of Cruyff’s initiatives could, of course,
be traced to the influence of Rinus Michels. But they also bear
relation to the work of Laureano Ruiz, who had been appointed to coach Barcelona’s
Juvenil A side in 1972. If Cruyff was the architect of the club’s
modern identity, Ruiz was its founding father. Like Cruyff, he also
advocated the use of the 3-4-3 formation and mandated that it should be used across the
various academy teams. Within a football culture very much
enslaved to the virtues of pace and power, he too argued the case
for smaller, more technical players. Cruyff built on Ruiz’s ideas and completed
them. From 1988 onwards, the 3-4-3 became a homogenised
standard across all thirteen Barcelona sides, including the first team. Each side shared
a common training emphasis, too, prioritising one or two-touch
circulation of the ball, pressing, and positional play. All
goalkeepers were expected to play out from the back, acting as an eleventh outfield player
and, in tone, all teams were to expected to play quick, attacking
football. Cruyff succeeded were Ruiz had been frustrated.
While the latter had successfully created a set of common
traits within the youth academy, the first-team had always existed in a vacuum, directed by
the tactical whims of whichever head-coach happened to be in
charge. Cruyff, with the force of his personality and weight of
his authority, was able to create proper coherence. His broader imperatives were that younger
players were to be accelerated through the age groups, pushed out
of their comfort zones and, when feasible, fast-tracked into the senior team at the first
opportunity. He also removed the premium on size and athletic ability.
Prior to Cruyff’s return, in spite of Ruiz’s evangelism, the
academy still prioritised physical attributes, habitually rejecting young prospects who were
unlikely to grow beyond 1.8m in height.
But his system of play depended on supremacy in possession. It necessitated the creation
of technically gifted players who could receive and distribute
the ball accurately, and then use it to exploit the space that his
football was designed to open. The intention was to create a conveyor belt of specifically
skilled players who, eventually, would naturally assimilate
into the first-team. Creating viable talent is one issue, having
the conviction to use it at a club with Barcelona’s expectations is
quite another. Cruyff’s willingness to promote from within helped to establish a precedent
which lasts to this day. He gave first-team debuts to 32 La Masia
graduates in seven seasons and, at the end of his fourth season,
he included two in the starting eleven which won the 1992 European Cup against Sampdoria.
The right-back Albert Ferrer and the deep-lying midfielder
who would eventually become the custodian of his work, Pep
Guardiola. Guardiola would return to the club in 2007,
by which time Barcelona had won the European Cup for the
second time in their history, beating Arsenal 2-1 in Paris. Of Frank Rijkard’s starting
eleven from that game, only two players - Victor Valdes and Carles
Puyol - were La Masia graduates. In each of Guardiola’s
Champions League wins - in 2009 and 2011 - Barcelona would start with 7 homegrown players in his
team. Guardiola had returned to the club as coach
of Barcelona B in 2007 and, on the recommendation of Cruyff,
he would be promoted as Rijkaard’s successor within a year. Guardiola changed the way talent
was advanced. His B team was comprised of young
players, but hung on a framework of older professionals who
created the conditions for success, both in the sense of winning games and providing spinal
security for developing talent.
In an echo of the past, as Cruyff had done with him, one of Guardiola’s first acts
on becoming head-coach of the first-team, was to promote Sergio Busquets
from the B team. He also purged the squad he inherited of
disgruntled players and those incapable of playing in line with the club’s philosophy.
Deco and Ronaldinho were sold, and Gerard Pique was retrieved
from Manchester United. In 2011, the original La Masia would close,
replaced by a new facility. Not before, however, Guardiola’s
success had provided its ultimate endorsement. On top of their two European Cups, the club
would win three straight LaLiga titles and do so under the
power of a group of generation-defining players who had been
raised within their own academy. Pique, Messi, Pedro and Fabregas, the fabled 1987 generation,
Andres Iniesta, Xavi and Puyol, goalkeeper Victor
Valdes and, of course, Busquets. In 2010, nine of the Spanish squad who would
win the World Cup had been raised in La Masia. Later that
year, in an endorsement which is unlikely to ever be repeated, the academy provided
all three Ballon d’Or finalists, with Xavi, Iniesta and Messi comprising
the final shortlist. Guardiola would leave the club in 2012 and
it was under his successor, the late Tito Vilanova, that La Masia
circle would finally be completed. In a league game away at Levante, in a match Barcelona
would win 4-0, Dani Alves was replaced in the first-half
by Martin Montoya and, for the first time in their history, the club
had eleven home grown players on the pitch at the same time.