Description: After several years of stagnation, Barcelona’s legendary talent forge, La Masia, is back in full force. Let’s look at how the Catalan club managed to revive its academy and what role Ronald Koeman and Xavi played in this.

URL: vozrozhdenie-la-masii

The revival of La Masia: how the Barcelona academy is again churning out world-class stars

This season, Barcelona will not be able to repeat last year’s success and win trophies, but Blaugrana fans have good reason for optimism. The club’s legendary La Masia academy, which has been in decline in recent years, is back at full capacity. Barça’s young players are increasingly shining in the first team, and talents such as Lamin Yamal and Fermin Lopez are already being called future superstars. Let’s figure out how the Catalans managed to revive their talent pool and which coaches played a key role in this.

From Guardiola to Bartomeu: the rise and fall of La Masia

La Masia flourished during the tenure of Pep Guardiola. Arriving at Barça in 2008, he already found many talented players on the team – Messi, Puyol, Iniesta, Xavi, Valdez. Pep continued this line, bringing in Busquets, Pedro and buying Pique from Manchester United. By 2009, the backbone of Barcelona and the Spanish national team was made up of academy graduates, as the 1win-azerbaycan.com website very often referred to.

But under President Josep Bartomeu (2014-2020), the situation has changed. He relied on expensive transfers like Dembele, Coutinho and Griezmann, which did not always pay off. But work with young people has faded into the background. As a result, La Masia stopped producing top-level players, and the symbol of the Messi era was forced to leave for PSG due to financial problems.

Koeman, Xavi and the new blossoming of the academy

The revival of La Masia began with the arrival of Ronald Koeman in 2020. Being a Barça legend, he was not afraid to play youngsters Ansu Fati, Pedri and Gavi. Yes, Koeman himself was quickly fired due to disagreements with the returning President Laporta. But the vector he set for trust in his students was preserved.

Javi picked up this trend and expanded on it. Without much money for transfers, he relied on talented young people. Under him, 15 La Masia graduates already made their debut, and Yamal, Fati, Balde, Gavi and Pedri became team leaders.

Now Barcelona faces a difficult choice of path. Real Madrid, with Perez at the helm, is assembling a powerful lineup of young stars – Mbappe, Endrick, and possibly Davis. Barça does not have the finances for such transfers, and this creates the risk of falling behind their eternal rival.

But if La Masia continues to consistently supply world-class talent, the Catalans will have their own trump card. Laporta understands this and is committed to returning economic flexibility to the club. This means that the next transition period of the Blaugrana may not be so long and painful.

The revival of La Masia is great news not only for Barcelona, but for the entire world football. After all, the Blue Garnet academy gave us Messi, Xavi, Iniesta and many other geniuses. It looks like the conveyor belt of stars at the Camp Nou is back in full swing. This means that in the coming years we will see many bright debuts and exciting games from Barça’s young students. We wish them success and will closely follow the careers of the new generation of La Masia.