Do Barcelona’s young stars love the club enough to stay for the rebuild?
Barcelona are going through a rebuild and are hoping that their next generation of talented youngsters can lead them back to the top of Spanish football. In their 3-2 win over Elche, the goalscorers were 22-year-old Ferran Jutglà, 17-year-old Gavi and 19-year-old Nico.
3 - Three Spanish 🇪🇸 players (Ferran Jutglà, Gavi and Nico González) have scored for @FCBarcelona in the same @LaLigaEN game for the first time since March 2014 against Osasuna (Pedro Rodríguez, Andrés Iniesta and Cristian Tello). Future.
— OptaJose (@OptaJose) December 18, 2021
It’s clear that Barcelona have a young core and a Spanish core, but it should be kept in mind that many of their rising stars aren’t actually La Masia graduates. Ferran Jutglà, for example, only arrived from Espanyol this past summer and there are others who spent significant time at other clubs before moving to Barcelona for a finishing school.
Looking at the nine players aged 20 or younger to have made at least one appearance for Barcelona this season, only five – Gavi, Ilias, Álex Balde, Nico and Ansu Fati – have been at the club for longer than two years, while four of these youngsters – Pedri, Eric García, Yusuf Demir and Ez Abde – all signed for Barcelona since the start of 2020. Of these nine players, only Ilias, Balde and García were born in Catalonia, so this is a quite different crop compared to some of the previous Barça harvests.
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Will Barcelona’s talented youngsters stay?
Given that playing for Barcelona hasn’t been a lifelong dream for all of these players – in the way that it was for the likes of Xavi, Carles Puyol, Gerard Piqué, Sergio Busquets and Sergi Roberto in the past – will these talents decide to stick around at the Camp Nou for what could be a lengthy rebuild?
Barcelona obviously remains one of the very biggest clubs in the world, but there will surely be more attractive offers in sporting terms for some of these rising stars.
The good news for Barça fans is that Ansu Fati and Pedri have already committed to long-term contracts, even though they spent most of their childhoods in Seville and the Canary Islands respectively. More than that, each teenager seemed thrilled to do so.
When Pedri committed to the Catalan club until 2026, he said: “My hope is to be here for many years. It’s a difficult time, but it’s still the best club in the world.”
It’s a difficult time, but Barcelona is still the best club in the world.
- PedriAnsu Fati echoed those statements as he signed until 2027, saying: “From the first day I told my agent that my first choice was staying here at Barça and he understood that. Yes, he may have received offers from abroad, but it was always clear to me that I wanted to be here.”
The passion of Gavi
As well as the comments like these from players who have already renewed, it’ll also be encouraging for Barcelona supporters to see the passion for the shirt that the various teenagers possess.
When Gavi netted his goal against Elche on Saturday, his first for the club to become Barça’s third-youngest scorer ever, the euphoria he displayed when celebrating with the Camp Nou crowd was pure and real.
Though he grew up just outside Seville, Gavi already loves the blue and red of Barcelona. So many of his colleagues do too and Joan Laporta will hope that this can make contract negotiations a little bit easier.
