The Barça school continues to make waves in European football. Not only have they produced four coaches (Xavi Hernández, Pep Guardiola, Luis Enrique, and Mikel Arteta) who have taken teams to the quarterfinals of the Champions League with a Barça background and a love for football that is synonymous with La Masia, but the Barcelona youth team is also in the spotlight with the emergence of players like Lamine Yamal and Pau Cubarsí. These young talents were instrumental in FC Barcelona’s victory over Naples in the round of 16. For the first time ever, a team fielded two underage players in its starting lineup. Lamine Yamal turned 16 on July 13, while Cubarsí celebrated his 17th birthday on January 22.
As if that wasn’t impressive enough, no other club among the 32 that started the group stage has had more than one underage player in their starting eleven in this tournament. Barça has already had three, including Hèctor Fort, who started at 17 years old in the match against Antwerp. The only other clubs with underage players in their lineup are Paris Saint-Germain with midfielder Warren Zaïre-Emery, Newcastle with midfielder Lewis Milney, Estrella Roja with defender Kosta Nedeljkovic, and Antwerp with forward George Ilenikhena.
The French international Zaïre-Emery, a key player in Luis Enrique’s PSG, turned 18 on March 8 but had already played six games in the Champions League before reaching the age of majority. Last season, he made his first-team debut at 16 under coach Christophe Galtier. Twice named ‘Man of the Match’ (against Dortmund and Milan in Paris) like his teammate Kylian Mbappé, Zaïre-Emery is the only one who can rival Lamine Yamal and now Pau Cubarsí in terms of media attention. Cubarsí, who has already been named MVP in his first European Cup appearance, made his debut in the Cup and League at 16, the same age at which Paolo Maldini made his mark under the guidance of the legendary Nils Liedholm at Milan. Perhaps since then, such a talented and solid defender at such a young age has not been seen.
Marc Guiu, at 17 years old, has also played for two minutes (33 minutes) in this Champions League, contributing to Barça having the lowest average age of the eight quarterfinalists at 24.9 years. Real Madrid, for example, is the second oldest with 27.2, only surpassed by Inter Milan (29.0). Pedri (21), Fermín López (20), scorer of two goals in this edition of the tournament, Alejandro Balde (20), Gavi (19), and Vitor Roque (19) are other exponents of the great future of this ‘Baby‘ Barça that He doesn’t want to put any limits on the road to the Wembley final.
This content has been translated and adapted from the Spanish version of the digital newspaper
