The Barcelona youth star who lost his way – and now helps others find theirs

Adria Carmona was a teenage superstar heading right to the top.

He started all five games as Spain won the Under-17 European Championship of 2008, beating France 4-0 in the final. A left-winger or attacking midfielder, he was among the most promising talents then coming through at Barcelona’s La Masia academy.

But by that time, he had already started to lose his love for the sport.

“Everything happened to me so quickly,” says Carmona, now aged 32. “I was 15 and playing with kids aged 18 at Barca. I started to feel responsibility, pressure, and realised this is not just a game. When it became something professional, a job, I stopped enjoying football.”

Carmona’s playing career never came close to reaching the heights achieved by contemporaries at Barca such as Thiago Alcantara and Sergi Roberto, or his Spain youth level team-mates Alvaro Morata, Isco and Koke. A big reason for this, he believes, was a “lack of psychological support”.

“I always remember when (then AC Milan team-mate Mauro) Tassotti told me, ‘Adri, you are very good, but you need to play more calmly’,” he recalls. “And I said, ‘How? I want to, but I don’t know how’. They said that with more games, more training sessions, I would pick it up. But I never really did. Until very recently, all that (psychology) part was just not worked on in football.”

Carmona is now a mental-coach, helping current players overcome the kinds of problems that so hampered his career — including some former team-mates. He has also been watching with interest as Lamine Yamal and Pau Cubarsi have become the latest to emerge from the academy at Barca.

“At 28 years old, I left football,” he says. “But I had seen what happened to many people I knew, and what happened to me. I believed I could help people, and that is what I am doing now.

“These mental skills are what makes a ‘normal’ player be excellent, and a ‘mediocre’ player have a normal career.”

Carmona was recruited to Barcelona’s youth system at eight years old. At that age, he would travel 90 minutes back and forth each day to train and play from his Catalan hometown of Igualada. In 2007, aged 15, he moved into the old La Masia residence next to Barca’s iconic Camp Nou stadium.

His feted generation — also including Thiago, Mauro Icardi, Marc Muniesa, Oriol Romeu and Ruben Rochina — won a Copa de Campeones and La Liga double at Juvenil A (under-18) level in 2008-09.

“They were the best years of my life,” Carmona says. “I studied there, and competed with my brothers. We all went to school together, trained together, hung out together.”

Carmona seemed on a fast track to the Barcelona first team. But it was not so easy. That 2008-09 season was also when Pep Guardiola’s senior side, based around other homegrown stars including Lionel Messi, Xavi and Andres Iniesta, won a treble: La Liga, Copa del Rey and Champions League.

“That Barca had so many top players, there was no room (for academy kids),” Carmona says. “Today, Lamine Yamal emerges, and others, as there are not those stars in the first team. It is about opportunities. That Barca B (the reserves) was really powerful too. Thiago and Sergi Roberto both had to wait. Nolito, Cristian Tello, Jonathan Dos Santos… there were quality players ahead of me.

“Luis Enrique (then Barca B’s head coach) did not see me as ready. And looking back now, I can see he was right.”

Having previously always been promoted ahead of his age, Carmona ‘repeated’ three seasons at Juvenil A level. Younger players started to pass him.

Impatient to advance his career, he made a free transfer move to AC Milan in summer 2010. Over the next two seasons, he scored 11 goals in 47 games for Milan’s Primavera — the youth side — while adapting to different tactical and physical demands in Italian football. He spent pre-season with Milan’s first team in 2012, but a three-month injury absence hampered his progress. Again, frustration was rising and he returned to Spain with a loan to Real Zaragoza in January 2013.

“A part was out of my control,” Carmona says. “I was coming from 4-3-3 (at Barcelona), with wingers who stayed wide, and defended by pressing high. I found it very difficult as a wing-back (in Milan coach Massimiliano Allegri’s 3-5-2), above all the defensive side. But a part was down to me. I could not manage the hurry I felt to show what I could do. A bit more calmness and patience would have been good for me.”

His six months in Zaragoza did not go well either. The club he joined were in turmoil on and off the pitch, heading for relegation and bankruptcy. Carmona returned to Milan but was released that summer, aged 21, without having ever played in Serie A. He spent the following seasons at Spanish lower-league sides Girona (then in the second tier), Albacete and Espanyol B, without settling anywhere.

“Through all that journey, I never found that run of 25 games a player needs in a season,” he says. “There were injuries and coaches always changing: at Girona, I had four (in one season). In summer, you are the much-hyped signing, but by Christmas nobody wants to see you.

“I was always trying to get back that feeling of enjoyment. ‘They called me the best player in Europe when I was 17. Why am I not the best player now?’. I couldn’t understand it, and lacked the ability to deal with it in the right way.”

After two injury-hit seasons at Lugo in Spain’s second division, in 2018 Carmona joined former La Masia coach Josep Gombau (now Aston Villa’s under-21s manager) at Indian Super League team Delhi Dynamos. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, he returned to Barcelona to play for third-tier CE L’Hospitalet. But a new career was starting to take over.

“I started to study during my time in India, looking for tools for myself,” Carmona says. “I saw people there had a much better emotional balance and awareness. And during my own search, I realised that I could help others, especially with my own experience.”

From left to right: Morata, Muniesa, Koke and Carmona (Adria Carmona)

Carmona started offering advice, and then services, to players he knew who are still in the game today, including his former La Masia room-mate Roberto and his old Spain Under-17s team-mate Morata. Others then started to get in touch with him, looking for help.

“Many players contact me, not because of a problem, an injury, or not being picked,” he says. “Often they are performing at six out of 10, after three years at the same club, and they want to perform at a nine: ‘What is happening, why am I not capable of more?’. So we go through a process, analysing the current situation. From there, we put together the pieces, every day, every week, to improve.”

Carmona has studied neuro-linguistic programming, an approach including communication, personal development and psychotherapy.

“Footballers live in a very volatile world, very fast-paced. Things happen in every game, every training session,” he says. “Neuro-linguistic programming gives them some small anchors, which work on a subconscious level. So that the external environment — the context, stadium, past experiences — does not dominate: ‘I’m the one in control’.”

Morata, now Spain’s senior national-team captain, has publicly credited Carmona’s help in overcoming nerves and self-doubt that affected his game. After scoring as a substitute against Germany in the 2022 World Cup finals, Morata praised Carmona’s aid in picturing different potential scenarios, from supporting his team-mates when on the bench to the goal celebration.

“We’re constantly visualising what we’re going to do tomorrow and the following day,” Carmona says. “Repeating the moment: ‘How I want it to happen. So that, when it comes, it will be closer to happening as I want it to happen’.”

Another client is Getafe striker Borja Mayoral, a graduate of Real Madrid’s youth system who struggled for his best form on loan at Wolfsburg in Germany and Italy’s Roma. Mayoral scored 15 goals in his first 27 games this season and was in line for a first Spain senior call-up when he injured a knee in early March.

“It was very painful, as the Euros were very close for Borja,” Carmona says. “Now his whole life has changed. You have to know how to manage it all. There is no point focusing on how the injury happened. Or on returning to play. That just creates more anxiety. Now you can study, or start a new business; enjoy opportunities usually denied to elite athletes. That will also help your knee to recover.”

Mayoral has 15 La Liga goals for Getafe this season (PGI/Quality Sport Images/Getty Images)

Carmona has also worked with the Brazilian midfielder Arthur Melo, who was much hyped as a youngster after winning a Copa Libertadores with Brazil’s Gremio and a title with Barcelona. Arthur hit a barrier during a season on loan from Juventus to Liverpool in 2022-23, where he played just one game, due first to injury and then Jurgen Klopp’s selection decisions.

“Arthur reached a point, with injuries, where he was hurting,” Carmona says. “He needed to go through that moment of pain and say, ‘Why do I want to keep playing?’.

“Often, when you are on automatic pilot, you do not make that reflection. Without reflection, there is no growth. And having those moments, so difficult, at Liverpool, when you are coming back and Klopp says no… I’m really proud of how he is performing for Fiorentina (on loan) this season, showing his quality consistently.”

Carmona’s final appearance as a professional was in May 2021, when he was injured when playing for CE L’Hospitalet in a third-tier game. He still lives in Barcelona, close to the Camp Nou, and has many friends among the club’s current players and staff.

La Masia still produces super-talented teenagers, with Ansu Fati, Gavi, Yamal and Cubarsi among those making the step up to first-team level in recent seasons. Carmona says he worries about the pressure being heaped on these kids by Barcelona fans and pundits, and especially whether coaches and executives ignore long-term risks to chase short-term goals.

“These days, a player who emerges at 16, with a few good games, is worth €50million,” he says. “The player can benefit from that. But he also has to be aware that this trampoline has slides which go down.

“And the club also need to think about something more important than any one trophy. If not, something like Pedri’s injuries can happen, or Ansu Fati’s. We all really want to see them every week, but there is a risk. Hopefully, there is more patience, with Yamal for example, but it’s difficult.”

The key, he says, is for these players to have good support and relationships with those around them — family, agents and coaches who have their long-term best interests at heart.

Cubarsi, 17, and Yamal, 16, have been revelations for Barca this season (Joan Valls/Urbanandsport/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

“These kids are living something nobody could be prepared for,” Carmona says. “Often, the people around the player are hurting him, not helping him. The opinions they hear — ‘Everyone else is to blame except you’. Helping the player to see the reality of the situation is very useful. If Ansu (currently on a season’s loan at Brighton of the Premier League), for example, is capable of managing those people around him, he will be better, (and) perform better.”

Carmona says that Barcelona fans accustomed to glory, especially from the Messi era, need to be realistic. For example, their current club captain Roberto has 22 trophies to his name after a decade as a squad player, and been involved in other key moments for the team, but has also been severely criticised by supporters and pundits at times.

“People are not aware of the stage that players are always performing on,” Carmona says.

“They cannot step off for even one second. Sergi is an example of how to deal with all of that. He has been injured, but he always returns and knows what is required. It is not a coincidence that every Barca coach has always spoken wonderfully about him.”

Carmona believes his career suffered as he lacked “tools to channel his emotions”. He now helps provide those tools, so that others can make the most of their potential.

“When you’re riding that wave, sometimes a storm comes and you’re able to surf it, but there are days when there is no wind behind you, and it’s very hard,” he says.

“I can use my own experiences to understand. When I can see and feel the precise moment they are in, I can help them the best.”

(Top photo: Giuseppe Bellini/Getty Images)