When Football Manager 2013 was released back in November 2012, Barcelona’s La Masia academy was at the height of its prestige.
Earlier that year, Pep Guardiola had fielded an entire XI of academy graduates. The likes of Xavi, Sergio Busquets and Gerard Pique played vital roles in Barcelona conquering the world, and there was a clamour to see who the next big things to emerge from the club would be.
Guardiola left Barcelona in the summer of 2012 and his former assistant Tito Vilanova was tasked with getting La Blaugrana back on their perch after Jose Mourinho’s Real Madrid beat them to the La Liga title with a hundred-point tally. They had no shortage of promising youth prospects emerging to help bolster the first-team squad.
FM 2013 earmarked no fewer than 15 wonderkids at Barcelona that year (via FM Scout). A fair few of them have gone on to enjoy decent top-level careers, but this list is testament that you can’t produce once-in-a-generation talents like Xavi, Busquets and Pique every year.
Sergi Gomez
The local-born centre-back clocked up nearly a century of appearances for Barca B between 2009 and 2014, but his only appearance for the first team was a 3-1 defeat to Sevilla in the 2010 Super Cup (Guardiola’s men went on to overturn the result with a 4-0 victory in the second leg).
Gomez left the club in 2014 and has gone on to forge a respectable career in Spain. He made over a hundred appearances for Celta Vigo, played a role on the fringes as Sevilla won the Europa League in 2019-20, and is now back in Catalonia, turning out for Barca’s city rivals Espanyol.
Marc Muniesa
Another that featured prominently as a youngster for Barcelona’s B Team without ever making it past the periphery of the senior set-up, Muniesa has enjoyed a half-decent career since leaving his boyhood club in 2013.
Premier League viewers may remember his five-year stint at Stoke City. He left the Potters in 2018 and is now turning out for Saudi Arabian outfit Al-Arabi.
Sergio Ayala
A centre-back called Ayala? Sounds promising. Unfortunately, young Sergio didn’t quite have the ability of his Argentinian namesake. He left Barcelona in 2014 without ever making an appearance.
Like Roberto, Ayala represented Valencia – but only the B Team, never quite showing enough for top-tier football. Still, he’s earned a living out of the game in the lower divisions of Spain, and after moving around a bit is now turning out for third-tier San Fernando CF.
Alex Grimaldo
Having…
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