Last season, we saw confirmation of Lamine Yamal’s supreme talent as well as the emergence of fellow Barcelona youngster Pau Cubarsi with his impressive displays.
Fermin Lopez went from playing in Spain’s third tier to joining Yamal in winning the senior European Championship in July and claiming Olympic gold with Cubarsi last month. Going further back, Barcelona’s famed youth academy, La Masia, provided Gavi, Alejandro Balde and Ansu Fati. Deeper into the archives again, there were Xavi, Andres Iniesta, Sergio Busquets and Lionel Messi. And some kids called Mikel Arteta and Pep Guardiola, too.
Few people are better qualified to talk about La Masia than Jordi Roura and Aureli Altimira — Barcelona’s youth academy directors from 2014 to 2021.
Both now aged 56, they met as Barca youth players back when La Masia really was a Masia — the academy was based in one of the typical Catalan country houses of that name. They often joked in the dining room that, one day, they would make it to the first-team coaching staff. Years later, that dream came true, with the pair working under Guardiola, Tito Vilanova and Gerardo Martino.
With Vilanova, they achieved two historic feats.
The first was reaching 100 points as Barca won the league title in the 2012-13 season, 12 months after arch-rivals Real Madrid hit that total, still La Liga’s record, for the first time.
The other came midway through that same campaign, when Barcelona played the majority of a La Liga match with a line-up formed only of graduates from their academy. It happened on November 25, away against Levante, and the team was as follows: Victor Valdes; Jordi Alba, Carles Puyol, Gerard Pique, Martin Montoya (who came on for Dani Alves in the 15th minute); Cesc Fabregas, Busquets, Xavi; Iniesta, Messi and Pedro.
It would be “very difficult” for that to happen again with any club, says Roura, but “if it can happen anywhere it’s at Barca”.
Here, the two old friends reflect on their work at La Masia, and the remarkable talents it continues to produce.
Inside the polarising world of youth football
Altimira: In 2014, when we came into the academy, the first thing we said was that we had to recover the tireless search for youngsters. It was essential that players come into the academy and get to know Barca’s football style at an early stage — the younger the better.
Roura: Looking at Catalonia first was essential and a trait Barca had to recover — not only because of a question of feelings but also because we consider that there is no better school. Catalonia produces the best players in Spain. Most of the teams here work very well in the younger categories.
Altimira: We wanted to observe how the youth coaches worked, to decide who we wanted to keep on. In the first year, it was all of them. But we also demanded that these coaches do a recruitment job because they, better than anyone, knew the players Barca were looking for.
Roura, left, and Altimira (Photo courtesy of Aureli Altimira)
Roura: People think when you sign a young kid it’s simple, but it’s not. From a protocol standpoint, the procedure is the same as signing a professional player. The deal also has to be executed very quickly. That’s one of the most crucial things. When there is an important player, whatever age he is, all the top teams are on their toes. You have to move very fast. Fermin was not easy and Gavi was not easy either…
The Athletic: Because it was difficult to move an 11-year-old kid (Gavi) from Andalusia to Barcelona?
Altimira: And because there was competition from Real Madrid, Villarreal… you had to move quickly and sell the idea of coming to Barca. One advantage is that La Masia has always had a good reputation as a place for young people to develop.
Other teams have a much more luxurious setup, but La Masia is a centre where everyone is very close to the players. It’s like a family, and parents appreciate this.
Barcelona’s current academy residence building, pictured in 2021 (Pau Barrena/AFP via Getty Images)
Roura: For a player’s profile — and Fermin’s case is a clear example — we always prioritised talent and technique over physique or immediate performance. What matters is that a player has talent and they understand the game, regardless of whether they are big or small. If they turn into an unstoppable 6ft 4in (193cm) giant, so much the better.
Altimira: Most of the players you look at this age are strikers. They are the ones who stand out, have the most ability, but many of them end up becoming defenders.
If they have talent, it’s easy for players to move positions. There are many such cases. Alejandro Balde, for example. He looked like he would be a winger, but when he moved to full-back in 11-a-side football, we saw that he had more scope coming in from the back. But it’s true that, with goalkeepers and centre-backs, we also looked for a minimum physical projection.
Roura: We’re not fooling ourselves. A goalkeeper in modern football, if he’s no taller than 6ft, he’s already in trouble, and a centre-back can’t be much shorter. It would be difficult for them to play at the elite level. Cubarsi (already 6ft and still growing at 17 years old) is an example of how we looked at the physiques of the centre-backs.
Cubarsi in action for Barca in their 2024-25 La Liga opener at Valencia (Pedro Salado/Getty Images)
Altimira: We saw him play for Girona at (fellow Barcelona side) Espanyol’s ground when he was 11. And then we asked what his father was like physically — if the father was tall, the player was more likely to be tall when he became an adult.
The other thing we started to do from Cadetes (under-15 level) was a line of succession. We looked at position by position. For example, we analysed the right-backs we had in Barca Atletic (the club’s reserve team, comprised of youth players, which plays in Spain’s third tier), Juvenil (under-19) and Cadetes to see where there were missing pieces, where we could improve, so that these players could one day make it to the first team.
Roura: That improved us a lot when it came to recruiting. Sometimes we were going to sign a full-back, who could be a very good player, but it turned out that we already had three (of those) and signing another didn’t make sense because you damage their progression. Still, there were some players we simply had to take because they were so good.
Altimira: But you can’t foresee a case like Lamine. He was a great player who stood out, but I wouldn’t have bet anything that at 16 he would be in the first team.
Roura: When Barca signed him as a pre-Benjamin (a level that features players aged between five and seven), he came from the trials. You saw him and physically he was very little. Very skinny…
Altimira: Yes, he ran with his feet turned slightly, a bit strangely…
Roura: But now and then, you’d look at him and say, “What has this guy just done?!” It was something different. And then as the years went by, we saw he’s a special player. Still, if you’d told me he would be playing in the (senior) European Championship with Spain at 16, there’s no way I would have believed it. Anyone who says differently is selling smoke.
Altimira: There are cases of kids who seem great when they were very young, but when they move on to 11-a-side football, they fall behind. And the opposite is also true.
The Athletic: Did you take into account their character?
Altimira: Every player is different and we have to help them, but between two technically-equal players, the one who is mentally stronger is the one who will make it. This is basic nowadays, to be mentally strong, to have personality and to have character.
The Athletic: Looking at players like Cubarsi and Yamal, it seems that nothing scares them…
Altimira: It doesn’t surprise me, because we’ve known these players since they were little kids and they’re used to feeling the pressure of the team, because every year they pass a test. They come in at eight years old and by the time they reach Juvenil they’ve done so through a funnel that gets narrower and narrower each year. They have to endure pressure every season to keep climbing.
Yamal and Cubarsi during Barcelona’s away win against Valencia last month (Eric Alonso/Getty Images)
Roura: During this whole process (of coming through the youth academy) players improve not only physically and technically, but mentally. Even at youth level, Barca have to win. Those who have been at the club for years are used to passing an exam every year. By the time they reach the first team, players are used to a certain amount of pressure, and they can take it with a certain amount of normality. Nowadays, a player who does not work his mind cannot play at the elite level.
The Athletic: Are young players being given too much responsibility now in the Barcelona first team?
Altimira: You have to be careful. The competition is very demanding and you have to keep an eye on them, because they are kids who still have some physical growth to do. Also, there’s the entorno. Suddenly everyone is talking about them and you have to help the kid learn to handle it. There have been cases of youngsters who have lost their way because of too much media pressure.
Roura: We have normalised something that is absolutely abnormal. That 17-year-old boys like Yamal and Cubarsi are performing as they are, not just with Barca but for national teams, this is abnormal.
Now it’s all praise, but we have to watch out for the day when the trend changes. One day, Cubarsi will make a mistake or Yamal will miss three goals. It happens. When it happens to them, you have to remember they are 17 and you have to protect them in every way.
The Athletic: Do you like the way Barca and Spain are managing them?
Roura: There was a lot of talk about what happened with Pedri or Gavi. I’m not a physio, but it’s clear these boys are still in the process of growing up, and you can’t treat a 17-year-old who plays all these games in the same way as a 27-year-old who is already grown up. Rest is as, or more, important than the workload.
Altimira: The schedule is monstrous. The cow is being milked everywhere and new competitions are invented every year. Logically, the young players always want to play. But there comes a time when they have to be told what they have to do and what they don’t have to do.
(Top photo courtesy of Aureli Altimira; design: Eamonn Dalton)
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