BarcelonaEspanyol fans took on with some skepticism last summer the addition of two players, Sergi Gómez and Aleix Vidal, who arrived at the club in a very advanced stage of their careers. At his age (29 and 32, respectively), some critics added another factor: his Barça past. Both, however, have been responsible for demonstrating their professionalism on the turf with performance and thus gaining the approval of the people.
Gómez and Vidal, however, are by no means the first players to start their careers at La Masia and land in Cornellà-El Prat at a time of maturity. There are other examples in the white-and-blue squad such as Fran Mérida and Oier Olazábal (30 years old when they landed at Espanyol), but not so long ago names like Sergio García (27 years old) also followed a similar path. , Manu Lanzarote (29), Abraham González (28), Víctor Sánchez (24), Joan Verdú (26), Paco Montañés (17), Moha (28), Jordi Cruyff (29), Òscar Garcia (27), Iván de la Peña (26), Dani Garcia (29) or the current sports director parakeet, Rufete (29).
The list is extensive and responds to a similar profile: players with a certain background who arrive at Espanyol free or at low cost after joining stages at different clubs outside Barça. Market opportunities, with a good foothold, that fit within the limited budgets of Espanyol, and that have seen with good eyes return to a city that they knew perfectly.
Only a minority of players crossed Barcelona at an earlier age: this is the case of Javi Puado (16 years old), Moha Ezzarfani (20), Marc Navarro (16), Mamadou Sylla (18), Víctor Álvarez (14), Toni Velamazán (22) or Raúl Baena (18). The latter was probably the case that raised the most dust, as his departure from Barça ended in a lawsuit that lasted six years and which concluded that, in the end, Baena did not have to to compensate Barça with 3.5 million euros, as claimed from the Camp Nou. The Supreme Court ruled in 2013 that the right amount was the 30,000 euros Baena had paid in 2008 to break the ten-year contract he had signed with Barça in 2002, when he was 13 years old.
Dani Jarque is taking action
Recent history, however, confirms that it is not uncommon for Espanyol to take away young players from La Masia. In most cases, in fact, the white-and-blue entity has chosen to incorporate only ex-Barça players who have resigned, ended their contract or simply wanted to leave. A policy radically opposed to that pursued by Barça in the opposite direction. So far in the 21st century, the Barça team has caught more than half a hundred children of training age from the Dani Jarque Sports City. The vast majority, however, did not end up making their debut at the Camp Nou.
Only a minority have achieved this, such as Adama Traoré (12 years old) or Alejandro Balde (8), some of the cases that can currently be found in Barça’s first team, but the list of young people who have ended up in professional football is quite extensive. : Dani Olmo, Sergio Gómez, Ilaix Moriba and Oriol Romeu passed to the neighboring rival at the age of 9, while Marc Bartra, Álex Collado and Jan Oliveras did so at 11. At 12, Adrián Bernabé did it, in an operation that the then coordinator of Espanyol’s grassroots football, Jordi Lardín, denounced: “The Federation cannot allow negotiations with children under the age of 15, as Barça has done, ”. Interestingly, Bernabé’s agent (currently at Parma, after three years at Manchester City) at the time was Iván de la Peña, who refused the training contract and pre-employment offered by Espanyol.
Barça never informed Espanyol of their interest in signing him, they simply contacted their surroundings and took him away. A strategy that has been repeated in recent years and now the parakeet entity is trying to avoid. “Our current policy is clear: all children between the ages of 12 and 16 must have a training document, so they can’t leave free and, if a club wants them, they have to call us, because if they don’t they will have to decide judge. From 16, all are shielded by clauses. Because we like to respect the other clubs, we avoid that the others do not respect us ”, say to the ARA sources of the establishment. The relationship with Barça is quite different from the one they have with Real Madrid, who do usually warn and offer better conditions – usually agreements – when they are interested in a player.
One of the most recent changes is that of Ferran Jutglà, who left Espanyol last summer, where he had been for nine years and where he was the captain of the subsidiary, to sign for Barça B. “We offered him a renewal with a very high salary. high in our chances, but he had very high expectations, he thought he could make the leap to the first team “, they admit from the white-and-blue squad, from where they offered him a season in which he would have alternated subsidiary and first team to give stability to the second Spanish team. Jutglà accepted Barça’s proposal and, this year, has ended up playing a leading role due to the needs of the first team.
The sports project as the main argument
Espanyol admits that it opens the door to those players who are not comfortable and want to leave, but makes it clear that it will try to retain the best by offering them a sports project that allows shortening stages if the player in question shows, with various parameters, that jump category. A formula that is already serving to keep talents like Gregorio Garcia, Burning. Madrid had a closed deal with their environment in the summer of 2020, but Espanyol, which had just changed the coordination of grassroots football, managed to keep it in an effort to shorten the processes within training football. From offering the youth A to be in the branch, to end up debuting with the first team in the Sadar last August, shortly before breaking the crossroads. In the last year and a half, Barça have only moved a formal offer for a Espanyol player, Carlos Alemán (youth A), but the white-and-blue club considered the offer insufficient. Barça did not insist, but instead beat other players such as Andrea Natali and Pol Bernabéu.
“If there is no training document in the middle, Barça will not call or negotiate with you”, they assure from the Spanish club. “We know that they have tried the best, we can’t think that they will not touch us, because we are rivals. Right now there is no direct relationship or any non-aggression pact, but if they want one of our players they will have to call us “, they assure. The professional rivalry between the two squads now takes precedence over the personal relationship that exists between the coordinations of the two squads: Alexanco and Toni Hernández, responsible for Barça’s youth football, worked together in the Valencia squad with Luis Vicente, the current squad coordinator. of the Spanish.
