LOST BHOYS IN BARCELONA

By Lee Roden

The Miniestadi, home of Barça B and location of Barça Juvenil A’s home fixtures in the Nextgen Series, has seen better days.

Seats are fading, paint is chipped and in general the place looks a little tired. The players that grace the pitch however are anything but things of the past, and the future of FC Barcelona has been plain for all to see throughout this European youth tournament.

La Masia, the small (now defunct) farmhouse that sits just outside the Camp Nou is beginning to gain a somewhat mythical reputation for football fans, and is the place where all of these young stars learned their craft.

It’s tempting to think that Futbol Club Barcelona have stopped using the facility with the idea of maintaining the legend, to go out on a high, with the only lasting memory that of Guardiola, Xavi, Messi or Thiago.

Barcelona’s current Juvenil A side are one of the last generation to have been schooled in the humble building, and if their dominance over Celtic in the Nextgen Series on Thursday night was anything to go by, they’ve had an ample dose of the fairy dust that sits in the rafters of their former home.

Having already covered Juvenil A, it’s easy to forget just how ridiculous it felt the first time I witnessed them playing. I remember thinking that it was as if someone had cloned the current Barça team and released them on the pitch. Though some of the players are still finding their feet, the raw talent and, crucially, the understanding of their role within the club is already implanted in their brains.

Given that the Nextgen Series is the equivalent of the Champions League for these players, it may be surprising to know that relatively few Barcelona supporters turned up for their crunch tie against the Glasgow side. If a youth team in Glasgow, for example, was playing this kind of football on such a regular basis, you would imagine that the punters would pay the paltry sum necessary to come and witness it at its inception.

Yet in Barcelona it’s almost as if the supporters have become accustomed to the way their team plays – it’s almost a requirement rather than a luxury. I have first hand experience of this myself, having been told off on a few occasions by older supporters in the Camp Nou for applauding tackles or passes that, to them, were the bare minimum they had came to see.

Of course, the lack of a diehard support at this level will do little to dampen the ambitions of these players – after all, the proof is there in their 5-1 victory over Celtic. As if they needed any more motivation, the Camp Nou sits within touching distance of their former Masia homes, and its towering presence over the Miniestadi would have provided a familiar incentive against Celtic.

Perhaps in moving the youth system from La Masia further out of the city they’ll lose a little of the charm provided by such proximity, but nonetheless, with their players achieving this kind of level already in their mid teens, their training methods are clearly not only working, but flourishing.

Thanks to the Nextgen, names like Dongou and Grimaldo (both were excellent against Celtic, with Grimaldo bagging a hat trick and moving to joint first in the goal scoring charts) are starting to gain stature amongst the football media. My only worry is that such pressure in their formative years could impact what many foresee to be an exponential development.

Knowing FC Barcelona however, who place so much value on humility and keeping one’s feet firmly on la terra, it’s unlikely to be the case.

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