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At its core, football is a sport deeply entrenched in local communities.
This may be particularly difficult to remember in this modern, globalised era of the sport. But a quick dive into the archives reminds us of the reality the beautiful game was founded on.
All but two of Celtic’s 1967 European Cup-winning side were born within ten miles of Celtic Park. Johan Cruyff’s all-conquering Ajax side of the 1970s was loaded with long-haired, turtleneck-donning local heroes.
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Manchester United’s treble winners famously comprised many academy graduates. More recently, Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona side of the late noughties and early 2010s, arguably football’s greatest ever side, was built atop foundations laid in La Masia, the Catalan club’s famed academy.
For a while that same club, Barcelona, strayed from what they were. In many ways, they tried, unsuccessfully it should be said, to emulate fierce rivals Real Madrid’s ‘Galacticos’ approach to football. Antoine Griezmann, Philippe Coutinho, Malcolm, Arthur, Clement Llenglet, Miralem Pjanic, and more arrived for huge sums.
Few, if any, provided an adequate return on investment, like a Porsche whose wheels fly off the first time it’s backed out of its owner’s driveway.
This strategy very famously led the club to the brink of breaking point. Stood at a cliff edge, a hundred-metre drop inches from their toes, Barcelona were as close to falling as possible without actually tumbling. A shocking reality to any, it served as yet another reminder that even the greatest empires crumble – ask the Romans.
And truthfully, were it not for the persistent genius of Lionel Messi, the greatest investment in the club’s history, they may just have fallen. The diminutive Argentine who clawed Barcelona to footballing summits few have ever reached put the club he loved on his back year after year, dragging them from the cliff’s edge, away from a fate they once seemed destined for, until its weight became too unbearable for his superhuman ability.
Trophies dried. Meetings were had. Financial levers were pulled. The cliff’s edge grew perilously closer.
Even now the club’s not yet in the clear. Recruit Dani Olmo, returning as a man to the club he left as a boy, may not see out the season if his registration, currently hinging on Andreas Christensen’s unavailability, is not extended.
There are still levels to pull, meetings to take, contracts to be re-evaluated, sponsorship agreements to seek, and a hurried return to the Camp Nou to increase revenue. These are not actions of a fiscally healthy organisation. They are undoubtedly acts so potently desperate anyone from Barcelona to Bankstown can smell it.
Lamine Yamal (Photo by Pedro Salado/Getty Images)
And yet on the pitch Barcelona’s squad, and new manager Hansi Flick, are holding up their end of the bargain. Without being perfect they sit atop La Liga as by far and away the division’s top scorers (48), having put four past Real Madrid, and are third in the reformed Champions League, having put four past Bayern Munich.
While much has changed since Guardiola’s golden years, his side and Flick’s share one common denominator: they trust the kids.
Barcelona’s 5-1 win over sixth-placed Mallorca at the start of December, their 12th of the season, saw Flick start six La Masia products: Lamine Yamal, Inaki Pena, Pau Cubarsi, Alejandro Balde, Marc Casado, and Dani Olmo.
Two more – Gavi and Fermin Lopez – joined off the bench. Ansu Fati and Marc Bernal have both received game time this season but are currently sidelined with injury. Add Pedri, not a La Masia product but still just 22, and Ferran Torres (24), and the youthful portrait Flick is painting is clear for all to see.
In fact, four members of the club’s squad are over 30: Marc-Andre ter Stegen, Inigo Martinez, Wojciech Szczesny, and Robert Lewandowski. At 36 the latter is old enough to be Lamal’s father, not that their on-pitch relationship would suggest that; the Pole needs the brace-faced Golden Boy as much as he needs one of modern football’s greatest goal-scorers.
Of course, it isn’t solely off the back of child labour that Barcelona have returned to the mountain top.
Lewandowski’s 15 goals is the most of anyone in the Spanish top flight. Raphinha is continuously staking his claim to be not only the best Brazilian in La Liga, but also the finest winger on the planet.
But it should be seen as no coincidence Barcelona’s renewed footballing prosperity has coincided with increased faith in their youth. History, after all, does not repeat, but it definitely rhymes.