Deco looking to alter development strategy for Barcelona academy talents

Barcelona Sporting Director Deco has implemented a number of changes since arriving in the role at the beginning of last summer, in particular regarding their pursuit of young talent. Now he is looking to improve their management of in-house talent.

According to MD, Deco is keen for the Blaugrana to follow the strategy that saw Fermin Lopez take a leap forward in his development, by loaning players out so they can gain more experience of the professional game, rather than maintaining them at Barca Atletic.

The idea is to have players tied to the club between the ages of 18 to 21 in order to evaluate through loans whether they can cut it for the first team, or whether they might be sold, having hopefully proven their ability elsewhere. The feeling is that those who remain at Barca Atletic sometimes stagnate in their development, and that spells away from the club could toughen up the youngsters.

While Fermin is the umbrella name for the strategy in the report, a more accurate example might be Ez Abde. Lopez went on loan to Linares, at the same level as Barcelona, and there is a risk that if Barcelona are to loan out their best talents, it may defeat the point of the subsidiary side. The flipside of the loan for Fermin is that other clubs have less motivation to develop players.

On the other hand, the likes of Eric Garcia, Julian Araujo, Sergino Dest and Chadi Riad are all benefitting from their loans, gaining match experience and increasing their value. The majority of these are younger signings rather than academy talents though, and comparatively the manager will not be able to call on younger talents to back up the first team.

There’s an argument to say that without the likes of Hector Fort, Pau Cubarsi and Lamine Yamal, Barcelona’s season could have collapsed. Similarly, Ronald Araujo in the past was able to develop at the club, coming into the first team on occasion, while also learning the style that Barcelona wanted to play.