Barcelona's academy talents Marc Guiu and Lamine Yamal show La Masia DNA remains key to the club's success

In conversation with Barcelona''s former academy coach Albert Capellas, Adam Bate finds out what makes teenage sensations Marc Guiu and Lamine Yamal so special and why that Barcelona DNA continues to be a key ingredient in the club's success...

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Saturday 18 November 2023 10:26, UK

Thirty-three seconds. That is all that 17-year-old Marc Guiu needed to score on his debut for Barcelona last month. His mother was in tears. Xavi was vindicated. Just the latest example of the club’s trust in La Masia, their famed academy, being rewarded.

There is Gavi and there is Pedri, there is Lamine Yamal and there is Fermin Lopez. Now, there is Guiu. His Instagram account had 44,000 followers before that kick of the football. Within hours, it had topped one million. Another overnight success story, or so it seems.

The truth is a little different.

«Now, everybody is talking about Marc Guiu,» Albert Capellas tells Sky Sports. «But he arrived at the club 10 years ago when he was seven years old. That means that the club has had to wait 10 years before he could play for the first team. It is a long time.»

Capellas spent more than a decade working in Barcelona's academy himself. He was there when Xavi, Andre Iniesta, Sergio Busquets and, of course, Lionel Messi, transformed the game and showed that could be done with a team built around academy graduates.

He does not talk of coaching those greats but learning from them. «I trained Iniesta for several years and I always say that Iniesta came into this world to show us how to play football. It is the same with Busquets. You do not correct them. They showyou the way.»

And yet, he knows how difficult it is to go on that journey through Barcelona's academy.