Barcelona’s famed youth academy, La Masia, is greater than only a coaching floor. It’s a philosophy, a lifestyle, and the heartbeat of one of many largest golf equipment in world soccer.
Consider tiki-taka. Consider the golden period of Barcelona, or Spain’s 2010 World Cup triumph. Consider Xavi and Andres Iniesta. Whether or not you realise it or not, you’re additionally pondering of La Masia.
Based in 1979 and housed in a Seventeenth-century farmhouse subsequent to the Camp Nou till its relocation in 2011, the academy has developed a staggering variety of world-class gamers, together with Xavi, Andres Iniesta, Sergio Busquets, Gerard Pique, and naturally Lionel Messi, who ranks at no.1 in FourFourTwo’s listing of the best gamers of all time .
Lamine Yamal is a La Masia graduate (Picture credit score: Getty Photos)
However La Masia isn’t nearly producing technically gifted footballers – it’s about shaping people.
The academy places emphasis on humility, and footballing intelligence. Younger gamers are taught to learn the sport, not simply play it.
Legendary supervisor Johan Cruyff helped construct La Masia (Picture credit score: Getty Photos)
All the best way right down to under-10s by way of to the first-team, there’s a constant fashion of play and coaching that permits for seamless transitions, as proven in Pedri, Gavi, and Pau Cubarsi’s current breakout campaigns.
Lamine Yamal, who’s 5/1 to win the 2025 Ballon d’Or , can be a graduate of the famed academy.
The outcomes communicate for themselves. In 2012, Barcelona made historical past once they fielded a beginning XI completely made up of La Masia graduates – a primary in soccer historical past. La Masia additionally turned the primary youth academy to have educated the highest three of the Ballon d’Or in 2010 – Messi, Iniesta and Xavi.
There are few, if any, academy’s in world soccer that may declare to match La Masia’s degree of expertise output. There are not any indicators of the infamous academy slowing down both – a scary proposition for golf equipment throughout Spain.
Barcelona skilled Graham Hunter: La Masia is solely ‘the farmhouse’
A number of of Barcelona’s largest stars got here from La Masia (Picture credit score: Getty Photos)
“La Masia is at all times simply the farmhouse. That is actually all it means.
“And La Masia is the place the place they stayed. It is actually known as, you already know, both the academy or soccer base. Not all the nice skills, even the youthful skills, keep at what’s now the La Masia.
“It is empty in the mean time, you already know, whereas Camp Nou has been redeveloped, nevertheless it’s the place younger youngsters would keep. They’d keep in a constructing which could nonetheless be known as La Masia, nevertheless it’s only a, you already know, a small multi-story constructing that is the coaching floor.
“So it is soccer base or or the academy that’s genuinely, I believe, a contemporary phenomenon.”
