"People come here to Barcelona to learn our ‘magic secret’ like it’s Coca Cola's
recipe”.
But it's not that simple.
There is no secret.
La Masia is a product of years of hard work by many different people who believed in the
same idea and system - which is not secret either” - iconic La Masia coach Joan Vilá,
in an interview with Michael Burgess in 2016.
La Masia is not what it used to be.
In 2012, Tito Vilanova played with 11 La Masia players for 60 minutes against Levante for
the first time in history.
In 2010, the world's top three players consisted of Messi, Iniesta and Xavi, according to the
Ballon d’Or voting.
All three were developed by the same school and idea: La Masia.
Expecting that to always remain the case, for La Masia to keep producing at the rate
of its 2000s peak, was always unrealistic.
But today, the contrast to today is huge.
So what went wrong?
Catalan journalists argue that one of La Masia's problems is an inability to get rid of talents
- and not hold on to them.
Pep Segura, formerly in charge of the football department at the club, emphasised in 2014
how important it was to rememdy this issue: “The possibility of loaning out players
is not used well enough.
10% of B players should come to the first team, 40% should be lent and the rest should
be released to make room for new U19 players.
Hard decisions must be made to not stagnate the system.”
Most youth teams have between 22 and 26 players, which means that many talents sit on the bench
without any getting enough minutes.
Ajax consistently keeps their squad under 18 players but, for example, Barça’s Juvenil
B (U18) had a squad of 26, Juvenil A (U19) had 22 and the B team had 24 last season.
(Joe: can you ask Simon to double-check these figures?
It’s not clear to me, but he might have better sources.)
Talent development around the world suffers from the same paradox: the better players
you produce, the better the first team and the better the next generation must be to
break through.
Barça’s golden tiki-taka generation emerged during periods of poor results and mediocre
squads.
There were fewer strong predecessors and expectations were lower.
That meant that there was less pressure and more opportunity to trust in new talents.
Ivan Rakitić confirmed this in an interview with Sport in 2018:
"I would love to see a generation like Puyol, Xavi, Iniesta, Valdés, Messi emerge every
second year”, Rakitic said.
“But it is not easy.
Barcelona has reached such a high level that there is no room to test and then see what
happens.
The players must really be talented before it is possible.
If the first team was worse, it would have been much easier.”
While the first team has become much better, another phenomenon is also seen within the
club that increases the pressure on talents.
Result-based football.
Johan Cruyff was known to always ask the youth coaches how their team had played in a given
match, and never what the result had been.
But Cruyff’s ideology has been diluted.
Barcelona has evolved from the mantra that "we must develop players" to a more and homogenized
"we must win".
Take the B team as an example.
In 2007, Guardiola and Tito Vilanova took over a historically bad B-team, who had just
been relegated to the fourth division.
Guardiola introduced a new system of "foundation players".
These players were typically purchased from other clubs and were older than the others.
They helped to get short-term results but still left room for young talents to develop.
However, it was important that they were sold again inside 2 years so that they would not
be an obstacle to home-grown youngsters.
When Eusebio became the B-team coach in 2011, he took this system too literally.
The foundation players went from having a supporting function to taking the place of
starlets.
This ideology that prioritises short-term results has spread since Sandro Rosell's presidency.
The transfer policy shows the fear of bad results from using academy players.
Why sell Grimaldo in the winter of 2015 and buy Lucas Digne the next summer?
Why buy midfielders such as André Gomes and Paulinho when players like Carles Aleña and
Sergi Roberto waited patiently for their chance?
This goes beyond players, too, with B-team coaches Jordi Vinyals (2015) and Gerard López
(2018) sacked because the team was relegated.
After a match in 2010, Guardiola stated that "the biggest victory is to give a La Masia
player their debut".
A total of 28 young talents from La Masia made their debut during Guardiola’s reign,
but since his resignation in 2012, the flow has dramatically subsided.
Short-term success is one of the big factors behind this recession.
Although Tito Vilanova (Guardiola's successor) put 11 La Masia players on the field against
Levante in November 2012, he only gave one academy player a debut during his year in
charge.
The lucky one was Carles Planas, who is now playing his football with AEK Larnaca.
Luis Enrique and Valverde have been so focused on results that they have rarely trusted in
La Masia products.
Back in April, Barça lined up without any La Masia graduates for the first time in 16
years.
Piqué also acknowledged back in August that the lack of confidence shown in the youth
is part of the problem: “The more confidence you give for your own
breeding, the greater the chance there is for those to stay.
However, it is also true that some youth players choose the money rather than the sports project.”
Andrés Iniesta agrees that helping to build belief is key: “There will always be quality
players because we have the world's best academy.
The problem is to give them hope and confidence,”
Gerard Pique previously mentioned the influence of money in youth football.
Every time an agent seals a new contract for their player, they get a commission.
The bigger the contract, the greater the bonus.
Agents can have - apart from taking care of the player's administrative work - a hidden
agenda.
At the same time, we see a tendency for big clubs to happily use extreme sums of money
on the youth section - which increases the pull effect to the benefit of the agents.
Real Madrid has spent 100 million euros on the renewal of their talent academy "La Fábrica",
and most recently bought an 18-year-old Vinicius Júnior for 45 million euros.
In 2014, Manchester City opened a brand-new academy that cost 220 million euros.
The architects behind that project are the former leaders during Joan Laporta’s presidency:
Txiki Begiristain who is sports director and Ferran Soriano who is CEO.
In Europe, only AFC Ajax refuse to work with agents working with players under the age
of 16.
Barça lacks - like many others - a way (or the courage) to deal with this money-prone
tendency encouraged by the expenditure of big clubs on youth football.
Pep Segura, the former head of football, shared his thoughts on the problem: "We always try
to help our youth players.
But we will never pay what some agents demand.
This involves extreme sums - like 1-2 million euros for a guarantee that a player, who is
already ours, will stay with us.”
Some players walking away from La Masia owing to the jaw dropping sums they can receive
at other clubs is just a consequence of Barça remaining resistant to manipulation.
Prior to Laporta taking charge of the club in 2003, La Masia was the product of the work
done by coaches and leaders that had been there for decades.
Oriol Tort, Laureano Ruiz and Joan Martínez Vilaseca were the first masters that bred
the academy from its start in 1979 till the end of the millennium.
Along the way - in the 1980s and 1990s - came teachers like Joan Vilà, Albert Benaiges,
Quique Costas, Rodolfo Borrell (now assistant manager in Manchester City), Paco Seirullo,
Albert Capellas and Álex García.
When Laporta became president, FC Barcelona was in a dilemma.
The commercialisation of football was accelerating, and big money was pumped into certain clubs
by hyper-wealthy people and organisations.
This divided FC Barcelona; Should they keep on being unique or should they go with the
flow and forget traditions?
Sandro Rosell, the then-vice president, was the first one to quit.
He did so in 2005 as a protest against Laporta's romantic approach to the issues.
He wrote books decrying Laporta’s naivety and, in 2010, was elected as his successor.
In the wake of a politically divided FC Barcelona, Rosell replaced his ‘enemies’ with his
own supporters.
He fired Benaiges, Alexanko and Albert Capellas who were in charge of the academy and instead
brought in Guillermo Amor and Albert Puig, only to sack them in 2014 in response to the
scandal involving Barcelona’s acquisition of foreign minors.
Later in the year, Rosell himself resigned suddenly, because of controversies regarding
the club’s deal to sign Neymar.
Vice president at the time, Josep Bartomeu, took the reins, creating further change.
Since Laporta’s presidency, constant switches in organisation and personnel have continued
to occur due to politics, scandals and resignations.
It’s a flux which runs contrary to the implantation of Barcelona’s core principles.
Ideas, especially the ones of Barça, take time to teach to children.
Coaches and leaders simply didn’t have enough time to impart their wisdoms before another
would take over and change direction.
In the time since, coaches, teachers and ideas have come and gone, including the La Masia
360 project, conceived as a residence and school for academy prospects.
The implementation of further structural changes occurred in 2019, but the integration of home-grown
talent into the first team remains an issue in need of resolution.
In search of minutes, many prospects have left La Masia for other clubs.
In our final part of this series, we’ll take a look at those who left Barcelona behind.