Not because the club has been lucky to get talented individuals through the doors, in fact it is not a matter of luck at all.
Having seen the facilities, you will soon realise that every detail has been taken care off.
Originally La Masia, was in the grounds of the spectacular Nou Camp (Camp Nou), but in 2011 they moved it to the Ciudad Deportiva Joan Gamper (world class sporting facility).
The idea was to provide athletes that did not live locally a place to stay while they trained and developed. Soon the concept evolved more and more and eventually it transformed into what it is today: the best training facilities in the world.
But the philosophy at Barcelona, went even further. It was not about making individuals with a good degree of skills, fantastic, but also delivering a message to everyone there that only, camaraderie, hard work and achievement of personal and group goal someone will succeed.
Any deviations from these messages is simply not tolerated.
A competitive family is possibly the best way to describe it.
And in order for all to work out and for the set up to be successful, a lot of money and creativity has been thrown into the project, to make it unique.
It is here where I met many members of the Management team of the different categories that represent the club.
Most of them where involved as players in the past for the club. So you will find ex GK Carles Busquets, ex striker Joan Barbara, Ex midfielder Oscar Garcia working alongside the future stars.
In a conventional interview, one will sit one on one with a person and ask a series of questions, receiving an answer and moving on to the next question.
To put to the test, the concept that in this family, everybody knows everything about the club, I have gone round finding information from many different people, sometimes even asking the same question.
I have put the following questions up for all to answer and incredibly the answers were unanimous.
What it made it more remarkable is that all were in separate places when asked.
1) Why is it that whilst having La Masia and with spectacular results in some cases, Barcelona is still a buying club, with a huge net of scouts all over the world?
The club’s project is to become self sufficient, but we are not there yet. If you look at the senior team today, most of them have been products of La Masia, but we still needed to add strength here and there. When we look at what we need, and what we have been buying in the last few seasons, we adjust our in house project to make sure; there is no need to keep spending on those positions in the future.
It sounds too simple, but that is the idea. If every 2 years we are spending money buying a left back, why not take that on board and form and develop players from a young age in that position, that will mature into good players with the club’s philosophy.
However, the importance of Barcelona as a brand worldwide makes it necessary for the club to have recognisable figures that people can associate with, and be attracted to us as a product because of that.
Fans love to have big names on their team, and at the level that we are in, we need to listen to the fans too.
Our scouts work in a different way to most. Let’s say we scouted a particular player and decided against signing him. Suppose that said player develops into a better player than we thought he would. We may then scout him again, to see what his club has done in order for him to have improved so much. Not every scouting mission is with a signing in mind.
One player that falls in that category is Anderlecht’s Dieumerci Mbokani, who we followed a few years ago, and did not pursue further. Now he has shown more development that we thought, so we went to see him, to determine what has been done with him, and how to learn from that.
2) So should we still expect Barcelona to buy big names, then?
Internally we have discussed that there in no many better players out there to what we have in here already. A great position to be in. We can’t think of many players that we will go and buy and will get straight into the team. People talk about Robin Van Persie, a great striker, if we go out there and sign him, will it make sense? He probably will get into the team but at the expense of Villa, Alexis Sanchez or Pedro who are top class strikers. Which in turn means we do not need another one. But we are receptive to what the fans want, and if they say, well people, we want Van Persie. Then we may consider it.
There is between €25m and €50m to spend in the summer (but more can be raised if needed), and we believe it will probably will be just one big name (Bale seems the priority to all), and maybe Javier Martinez of Bilbao.
Guardiola prefers a small squad, dipping into the B team or the academy when required to keep developing the club.
3) Tello, Cuenca, products of La Masia, but the press have been reporting that the club are offering them around Europe to raise funds…. Doesn’t that contradict a little what the Barcelona philosophy is?
We at the club look after every player. The ones that we offer to other clubs, we will normally sell with a buy back clause. The reason is that we still get a fee, which is better than a loan, and if the players amass games and become better, we have the first refusal to buy them back.
For example Tello, has been getting great reviews, and many teams like Liverpool, Cheslea, Benfica and Arsenal have been interested in talking about him to the club.
Cuenca has renewed his contract, so it is a different case altogether.
4) How about the coaching staff progression. Is there a plan for that as well?
Officially there is not, which makes us all want to work harder to get to our objectives here.
But working in La Masia gets us noticed as well. For example Oscar Garcia, working with the youngsters here, has decided to leave at the end of the season, and Stoke and Sunderland had already shown an interest of getting him on board with their respective clubs.
5) Who are the best talent developers in the world right now?
Barcelona, without a doubt. Followed by Anderlecht and Benfica. South American teams are blessed with raw talent, but in the past decades they have fallen behind in facilities to match what Europe can offer.
It is an amazing show of singing from the same hymn sheet scenario, but not because the boss said so, but because everyone involved with the club wants to be on the same page.