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Very few teams have dominated both domestic and European football at the same time over a decade like Barcelona did between the 2005/06 season and the 2014/15 season. During this period of dominance, they won 22 trophies including 6 league titles and three Champions League titles.
The key to Barcelona’s success was their fabled academy - La Masia. The most notable La Masia products that played for Barcelona during their decade of dominance feature Lionel Messi, Andrés Iniesta, Xavi Hernández, Carles Puyol, Sergio Busquets, Víctor Valdés, Gerard Piqué, Pedro Rodríguez, Cesc Fabregas and Jordi Alba.
The academy constantly churned out talented youngsters but many of them couldn’t make the step up to the first team. Some of these players made the grade elsewhere and then there are few others like Gerard Pique that left the club at a young age only to return years later with a wealth of experience.
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There are so many players that fall in either one of the categories mentioned above. So many that we can actually make a world-class XI of such players!
Goalkeeper: Pepe Reina
Two Spain internationals, Pepe Reina and Victor Valdes, were part of Barcelona’s youth teams at the same time. Despite being the younger goalkeeper by 7 months, it was Reina who made his senior debut for Barcelona first. He made his debut in December 2000 and went on to play 49 games for the club by the end of the 2001/02 season.
The arrival of Robert Enke ahead of the 2002/03 season meant that Reina was free to leave the club and he joined Villarreal. Funnily, a few months after Reina’s departure, a change of manager happened and Valdes went on to become Barcelona’s first choice goalkeeper - a position he held until his departure in 2014. That could have been Pepe Reina's place.
Reina, on the other hand, became a success at Villarreal, helping them qualify for the UEFA Champions League for the very first time.
After three successful seasons at Villarreal, he moved to the Premier League to play for Liverpool and he went on to become one of the greatest goalkeepers in the club’s history. In fact, he won the Premier League Golden Glove in his first three seasons at the club.
After leaving Liverpool, Reina has represented Bayern Munich and Napoli. He is still contracted to the latter.
Interestingly, Reina made his debut for Spain in 2005 almost five years before Valdes got his first cap. Although he has played #2 to Iker Casillas and now David De Gea, Reina has played in goal for Spain in 36 games.
The 35-year-old is part of Spain’s current World Cup squad and this will be his fourth time at a World Cup. In fact, since his debut, he has been part of every Spain squad for a major tournament except Euro 2016.
Fullbacks: Hector Bellerin and Jordi Alba
Hector Bellerin and Jordi Alba have a couple of things in common. Both players left La Masia before completing their football education and both players started their careers as a winger. Yes, two of the quickest fullbacks in the world right now were wingers when they were at the Barcelona.
Alba was released in 2005 because he was deemed too small. He then joined Cornellà which was another club based in Catalonia. In 2007, he moved to Valencia and it was here that he made his successful transition to a left-back.
Due to injury problems, now Arsenal manager, Unai Emery, played Alba as a left-back during the 2009/10 season and because of the player’s success in that role, Emery persisted with Alba as a left-back. In fact, the player has given credit to Emery for his positional change.
Alba returned to Barcelona in 2012 and has become a vital cog in their machinery and is among the best full-backs in the world at the moment.
Bellerin, similarly, left La Masia in 2011 to join Arsenal. It was Steve Bould at Arsenal who helped Bellerin switch positions successfully. He made his debut for Arsenal in 2013 and has so far racked up 162 appearances for the Gunners.
With Unai Emery in charge of the club now, Bellerin can hopefully take bigger strides in his ongoing development and emulate the success of Alba.
Centre-backs: Marc Bartra and Andreu Fontas
It was a dilemma whether to include Gerard Pique in this list or not because he too left La Masia midway to join Manchester United. He made his professional debut for Man Utd but only made 23 appearances for the club between 2004 and 2008. His rise to prominence was at Barcelona, so we have left Pique out of the list and picked Marc Bartra and Andreu Fontas instead.
Bartra played for the Barcelona senior team between 2009 and 2016 making 103 appearances, but he spent his entire time at the club as an understudy to the likes of Gerard Pique, Carles Puyol, Javier Mascherano and Jeremy Mathieu.
He left Barcelona to join Borussia Dortmund in 2016 and helped the club win its first major honour since 2012 by starting and playing 76 minutes in the final of the 2017 DFB-Pokal. However, his time at the club was affected by an injury he sustained in the team bus when it was hit by three explosions ahead of a Champions League quarter-final tie against AS Monaco on 11 April 2017.
Admirably, Bartra played the DFB-Pokal final only a couple of weeks after he returned from surgery for the injuries he sustained in the blast.
He returned to La Liga in January 2018 with Real Betis and helped the club finish 6th and qualify for next season’s Europa League.
The other central defender in this list, Andreu Fontas, played with Bartra during his formative years but his stint with the senior team was short lived as he played just 16 games across all competitions between 2009 and 2013.
Fontas was sold to Celta Vigo in 2013 and he has been at the club since. When he arrived at Celta, it was a club that finished 17th in the previous season and avoided relegation by a single point. In his first two seasons, he played a crucial role in helping them finish a respectable 9th and 8th respectively.
Midfield: Oriol Romeu, Cesc Fabregas and Thiago Alcantara
Bellerin was not the first La Masia player who left the academy midway to join Arsenal. He followed in the footsteps of Cesc Fabregas who later went on to captain the Gunners.
Fabregas left Barcelona sensing that he would have limited opportunities at the club and rightfully so. It would have been very difficult for a 16-year-old to displace Andres Iniesta or Xavi Hernandez.
Fabregas was an integral member of Arsenal’s midfield between 2004 and 2011, playing 303 games. In November 2008, he was named the club captain - an honour he held until his departure in 2011 when he broke the hearts of Arsenal fans by returning to Barcelona.
He spent three seasons at Barcelona winning several honours before he was deemed surplus to requirements and was sold to Chelsea, for whom he still plays.
Thiago Alcantara is another La Masia graduate poised for a return to Barcelona and it could happen this summer.
The 27-year-old made his professional debut with Barcelona but his first team opportunities were limited at the club despite his talent. So when Pep Guardiola took over as manager of Bayern Munich in 2013, he brought Thiago to the Bavarian club.
At Bayern, Thiago suffered a series of long-term injuries but ultimately went on to become a key player for the Bavarians. During his first season, he broke the record for most touches and passes in a single Bundesliga game but it was later surpassed by a certain Xabi Alonso.
Thiago has played 151 games for Bayern Munich in his five seasons at the club but if rumours are to be believed, then the club is willing to part ways with the player and a return to Barcelona looks likely.
The last player in this midfield hasn’t hit the heights of the other two players but he is slowly becoming a figure of consistency in the Premier League.
Romeu only made two appearances for the Barcelona senior team before following a well-trodden path to the Premier League by joining Chelsea in 2011. He started his Chelsea career brightly before a knee injury sidelined him for the rest of the season in December 2011.
Post-injury, Romeu was not able to break into the senior team and spent the 2013/14 and 2014/15 seasons on loan at Valencia and Stuttgart respectively. In 2015, he left Chelsea to join Southampton and has cemented his place in the team as one of their most important players. In fact, he was named Southampton’s Fans’ Player of the Season in 2016/17.
Unsurprisingly, there are rumours linking him with a move away from St.Mary’s.
Forwards: Mauro Icardi, Giovani dos Santos and Keita Baldé
The entire list so far comprised of Spanish players but none of the forwards are Spaniards although one of them was born in Spain.
The biggest name in the list of forwards is Inter Milan captain Mauro Icardi.
He signed for Barcelona in 2008 when he was 15 and in January 2011, he left the club to join Sampdoria on loan. His six-month loan spell at Sampdoria saw him score 13 goals in 19 games for the Primavera team which prompted the club to utilise the option to buy him permanently.
He made his professional debut on 12 May 2012, in a Serie B game against Juve Stabia as a 75th-minute substitute and ten minutes later he scored his first professional goal to win the game 2-1 for Sampdoria.
The following season, he played 31 games in Serie A scoring 10 goals and thus earned a move to Inter Milan. At the time of this transfer, he stated that he has no regrets about leaving Barcelona.
The Argentine has thrived at Inter scoring 107 goals in 182 games for the club while also being named the club captain ahead of the 2015/16 season. He was also the Serie A top scorer in 2014/15 and 2017/18.
Giovani dos Santos also left Barcelona to play for a Premier League club based in London. Before leaving Barcelona, he played 38 games for the senior team scoring three goals and all three goals were in his last game for the club!
The Mexican joined Tottenham in 2008 but he found little success there and while at Spurs, he had three loan spells where he again struggled.
It was a permanent move to Mallorca in 2012 that helped him get his career back on track as he scored 6 goals and assisted 7 more for a team that was relegated. However, his individual performance was enough to earn a move to Villarreal. At Villarreal, he racked up 17 goals and 14 assists in 73 games before moving to MLS side LA Galaxy where currently plays.
Interestingly, Giovani has a younger brother, Jonathan, who is a midfielder by trade and also a La Masia graduate. Jonathan played 28 games for the senior team before playing alongside his brother and Villarreal and now at LA Galaxy.
Completing this XI is Keita Bald who was born in Spain to Senegalese parents but opted to play for his country of origin and will be doing so at the 2018 FIFA World Cup.
Barcelona sent Keita on loan to Cornellà for two seasons as punishment for placing an ice cube in a teammate’s bed when the youth team traveled to Qatar for a tournament. He excelled while at Cornellà and upon completion of his loan spell, he turned down the chance to return to Barcelona.
In 2011, he signed for Lazio, initially playing for the youth sides before being promoted to the senior team during the 2012/13 season. He played 137 games for Lazio scoring 31 goals and assisting 12 more at a very young age. In his final season at the club, he scored 16 league goals which made him the joint 8th leading goalscorer in the league.
He joined Monaco last summer, playing 33 games, scoring 8 goals and assisting 9 more in his debut season. Still only 23, Keita has the best years of his career ahead of him.
