Top 5 Barcelona players to have graduated from La Masia

#2 Xavi Hernandez

The Puppet Master: Xavi

Cool. Calm. Collected. Always. Without Xavi, it would have been impossible for Barcelona to play the Tiki-Taka brand of football. His ability to find and exploit space as a deep-lying playmaker, along with his partnership with Iniesta in the midfield was a lethal combination not only for the club but also for the national side. The two rarely gave the ball away and left the opposition’s midfield dizzy after they entered the duo's carousel.

Xavi started at La Masia at the tender age of 11, making his first-team debut against Mallorca in August 1998. Since then, he has played 700 matches, scored 82 goals and made more than 180 assists for over 50 players, thus being widely regarded as the greatest Spanish player ever.

He had a 91% passing success rate at the 2010 World Cup and made 57 accurate forward passes in the final itself. That is how Xavi breaks the opposition down, by continuously bombing the rival's defence with pinpoint through balls and overhead lobs for his side’s forwards and rampaging full-backs, when the rival defence does clear their penalty area from a Barcelona attack, the ball is invariably collected in the midfield by Xavi and he orchestrates another attack, thus creating an unrelenting pressure cooker situation for the opposition for the entire 90 minutes of the game.

Xavi truly embodies what the philosophy of La Masia preaches. If Pep Guardiola was the prototype of the pivotal midfielder, Xavi is its custodian.