La Liga giants Barcelona have produced more footballers currently playing in Europe's top leagues than any other club, according to new research by the CIES Football Observatory.

There are 43 different players who have come through Barca's La Masia academy currently plying their trades in the "big five" of Spain's La Liga, the English Premier League, German Bundesliga, Italian Serie A and French Ligue 1.

Manchester United come second in the rankings with a total of 36 players developed, followed by Real Madrid [34], Olympique Lyon [33] and Paris Saint-Germain [27].

Barca's total includes 13 players currently at the Camp Nou, as well as 30 playing elsewhere including Chelsea's Cesc Fabregas, Bayern Munich's Thiago Alcantara, Porto's Christian Tello and Stoke City pair Bojan Krkic and Marc Muniesa. The Catalan club's youth development facilities and coaching is widely admired, however their failure to comply with recruitment regulations has led to FIFA imposing a 12-month transfer ban upon them which is currently in force.

LINK

I can't find a list of players or this place's criteria for "homegrown," because the United number seems a little too high.

(Also, I have a feeling SCH won't be bad-mouthing ESPN FC for this story.)

This post was edited on 10/28/14 at 7:28 am

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Posted by StraightCashHomey21

Aberdeen,NC

Member since Jul 2009

125393 posts

Posted on 10/28/14 at 7:28 am to WarSlamEagle

quote:
Also, I have a feeling SCH won't be bad-mouthing ESPN FC for this story

I mean they did link someone elses work, espnfc has been pretty shitty lately.

Anyway this should be no surprise these big clubs have so many youth players who don't pan out but are able to move elsewhere and play.

This post was edited on 10/28/14 at 7:32 am

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Posted by WarSlamEagle

Manchester United Fan

Member since Sep 2011

24611 posts

Posted on 10/28/14 at 7:34 am to StraightCashHomey21

I was referring more to the number of players still on the team, but I guess first-team rosters still can have a ton of names on them.

This post was edited on 10/28/14 at 7:36 am

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Posted by StraightCashHomey21

Aberdeen,NC

Member since Jul 2009

125393 posts

Posted on 10/28/14 at 7:42 am to WarSlamEagle

Our youth system is a factory, we have some outstanding talent right now and LvG loves to play youth. Maybe we will see another class of 92 type impact in a few years.

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Posted by joey barton

Member since Feb 2011

11468 posts

Posted on 10/28/14 at 8:13 am to StraightCashHomey21

quote:
this place's criteria for "homegrown,"

It was in the linked infographic:

quote:
* At least three years at the club between the ages of 15 and 21

(Yes, they wrote an entire story based off of an infographic)

quote:
youth players who are ignored

Fixed for La Fabrica

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Posted by wm72

Brooklyn

Member since Mar 2010

7797 posts

Posted on 10/28/14 at 8:35 am to joey barton

quote:
* At least three years at the club between the ages of 15 and 21

This is where the "homegrown" talent is more a roster accounting designation than a statement of how good an academy may be at producing top talent. Of course, bigger clubs will have more because they buy the budding 16-17 yo superstars off smaller clubs.

For example, I consider Florenzi strictly "homegrown" in the sense of the academy actually producing a top player whereas AS Roma bought/attracted Nico Lopez when he was already the hottest young prospect in Uruguay at 17yo simply because we are a club with the cache to do so.

Many of these kids may have actually "developed" better had they simply stayed at smaller clubs.

This post was edited on 10/28/14 at 8:49 am

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Posted by Dandy Lion

Member since Feb 2010

50248 posts

Posted on 10/28/14 at 8:42 am to StraightCashHomey21

quote:
Our youth system is a factory

Most are. R&D, QC and product design differ immensely, however.

This post was edited on 10/28/14 at 8:45 am

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Posted by StraightCashHomey21

Aberdeen,NC

Member since Jul 2009

125393 posts

Posted on 10/28/14 at 8:56 am to wm72

quote:
This is where the "homegrown" talent is more a roster accounting designation than a statement of how good an academy may be at producing top talent. Of course, bigger clubs will have more because they buy the budding 16-17 yo superstars off smaller clubs.

Yes but the bigger clubs still produce first teamers from a younger age.

Clubs like City and Chelsea have made great youth team strides but most of it is buying younger players from outside England at the age of 16 17 and they are on the U-21 rosters. I don't think we will see their U-21 squads into first team heavy UK based for about 10 years. Chelsea is ahead of Man City with UK players bc they have always had an established youth set up.

United and Liverpool tend to develop alot more UK players.

This post was edited on 10/28/14 at 10:08 am

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Posted by S