October 28 – Barcelona, who fell foul of FIFA’s regulations on the transfer of youth players and were forced to clean up their act, have proof that their system does in fact work following figures from the CIES Football Observatory that show the club leads the way in Europe’s big-5 leagues in numbers of youth players making it through to their first team, as well as providing more players from their system to other big-5 league clubs.
CIES figures report that out of the 43 big-5 league footballers trained at Barcelona, 13 are still playing for the Catalan club. Only Olympique Lyonnais, Athletic Bilbao and Real Sociedad have a greater number of club-trained players in their current squad.
Barcelona have 30 players who trained at their academy playing for other big-5 league teams. They are followed by Real Madrid (26) and Manchester United (24).
But the bad news is that overall the figures show that the percentage of club-trained players went down for a fourth consecutive season and has now reached a new record low: 17.2% of squad members. This percentage varies between 24.6% in France and 9.6% in Italy.
Argentina’s River Plate heads the ranking of clubs not participating in the big-5 leagues but providing players from their youth systems, with 17. This is two more than Le Havre, Ajax and Munich 1860.
The Big-5 leagues are the English Premier League, Spain’s Primera, Germany’s Bundesliga, Serie A in Italy and Ligue 1 in France. To be considered club-trained, UEFA criteria says the player must have played for at least three seasons between the ages of 15 and 21 for his employer club.
See Barcelona hit with transfer ban for breaking FIFA’s child trafficking laws http://www.insideworldfootball.com/world-football/europe/14408-barcelona-hit-with-transfer-ban-for-breaking-fifa-s-child-trafficking-laws?highlight=WyJiYXJjZWxvbmEiLCJ5b3V0aCIsImJhcmNlbG9uYSB5b3V0aCJd
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