Barcelona's Youth Setup Is Finally Back on the Right Track
By Tom Gott
For a club who pride themselves on the success of their academy, Barcelona haven't had a lot of success with it in recent years.
You have to go back to the early 2000s to find a Barcelona team stacked with homegrown talent. Xavi and Andres Iniesta were football's greatest midfield, Carles Puyol ran the show at the back and Victor Valdes starred in goal.
As we hit the 2010s, we saw the likes of Pedro, Gerard Piqué and a certain Lionel Messi arrive on the scene, with La Masia constantly producing some of the world's premier talents.
As the years have passed, that homegrown influence has faded. In terms of senior players at the club, Messi, Piqué, Jordi Alba, Sergio Busquets and Sergi Roberto are left to fly the flag of years gone by, with Roberto the youngest of that group at 28.
There's been a near decade-long absence of a pathway between La Masia and Camp Nou, but finally, Barça's youth mean business once again, and they're already thriving.
When talking about young prospects at Barcelona, you have to start with Ansu Fati, the 17-year-old winger who could well be the first team's best forward not called Lionel Messi right now.
Fati has already managed 38 appearances for the first team and has chimed in with an impressive 12 goals and three assists. Not only has that had a huge impact on the senior side, but it has reopened the pathway which many assumed had been closed after the criminal misuse of Riqui Puig and Carles Aleñá.
At just 21 and 22 respectively, Puig and Aleñá are supposed to be the Xavi and Iniesta of their generation, but the board's preference to splash out on the 30-year-old Miralem Pjanićs of the world has left both starlets out on the fringes.
Puig particularly has attracted plenty of attention for his lack of game time. Seen as one of the most talented midfielders to come out of La Masia in years, he's yet to find a manager prepared to put faith in him, and the board aren't bothered enough to intervene.
However, Fati's emergence has changed that. The faith in youngsters has been restored once more, and there are countless young stars prepared to take advantage of that.
In terms of homegrown talents, centre-back Ronald Araújo and goalkeeper Iñaki Peña are well-known, while American winger Konrad de la Fuente is on the cusp of a breakthrough of his own.
It's not even purely academy youngsters who deserve your attention. The faith in Fati has seen the Barcelona board take a greater interest in the transfer market, with right-back Sergiño Dest and wingers Pedri and Francisco Trincão all looking like fantastic buys.
For too long, Barcelona have been paralysed by short-termism. The desire to win now has been so strong that club officials have thrown money about in a desperate search for dominance, but it has left the future feeling neglected.
It's why we've seen this drop-off from Barcelona in the last few years. There had been no preparation for the future, so when the win-now bunch began to decline, there was nothing to stop that. There was no influx of youth to freshen things up.
The hierarchy deserve the blame for that, but they also deserve some of the credit for changing it. There's not a lot you can praise the Barcelona board for, but we have seen a greater reliance on youth in the last year or so.
Is that purely an attempt from president Josep Maria Bartomeu to appease the fans? Potentially. We've seen presidential candidates like Victor Font promise to rebuild La Masia if they win, so perhaps Bartomeu is hoping he can recover some supporters by doing so himself.
Regardless of whether his intentions are pure, there's no denying that it's a good thing to see these youngsters coming through.
One look at the academy will suggest this trend will continue. Álex Collado, Ilaix Moriba, Hiroke Abe, Oriol Busquets and Rej Manaj are just a handful of some of the fantastic young talents coming through. With the right management, Barcelona could be set for years to come.