How concerned should Barcelona be about their Youth League elimination?

Euan McTear

12 Dec 2021 10:27 GMT
4 min read

In addition to Barcelona’s Champions League group stage exit, the club’s Under-19s team has also suffered an early European elimination by finishing third in their UEFA Youth League group. The campaign was a poor one, with Barça’s youngsters collecting just four points from six games as they scored just five and conceded 14. In their final game, a dead rubber away at Bayern Munich, they led 2-0 after 10 minutes, but ultimately fell to a 3-2 defeat.

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The elimination was mathematically confirmed before the final round, with a 3-0 defeat to Benfica at the Estadi Johan Cruyff confirming the early exit. It was against the Portuguese side that Barcelona won the first edition of this youth tournament in 2013/14, but Benfica were far too good for the Catalan side this year.

Given that Barcelona’s finances are in an awful place, meaning they’ll need to rely on youth in the coming years, how concerning is this exit in the first round of the Youth League? Does it suggest that there aren’t many more talents coming through? Well, not really, and here’s the explanation why.

Explaining Barcelona’s early Youth League exit

The UEFA Youth League is a tournament for the Under-19s sides of all clubs that qualify for the senior Champions League and for the other best youth teams on the continent. For those with their senior side in the main competition, the group is identical to the first team and matches are played with the same schedule.

This is why Barcelona’s U19s were drawn into a group with Benfica, Dynamo Kyiv and Bayern Munich. That’s not easy, as these are some of the toughest opponents you could face at this stage of the competition. That includes Dynamo Kyiv, who are much more of a powerhouse at youth level than at senior level.

Besides that, Barcelona were hamstrung by the fact that some of their best Under-19s players were actually so good that they were already at B team level or even with the first team.

Gavi, Alejandro Baldé and Ilias Akhomach have all played for the first team this season under Ronald Koeman or Xavi and they were each eligible to participate in the Youth League this season, as this competition is for players born on or after January 1st 2003. Ilias did actually play in four matches, but the other two talents didn’t feature at all as they had bigger fish to fry.

Yusuf Demir could have featured for the U19s too, yet he was signed in the summer to play at the more senior level. Then there’s players like Ansu Fati, Nico González and Pedri, who are stars of the first team and only one year older than the 2021/22 Youth League cutoff.

This all meant that the U19s team competing in the Youth League was a very young outfit. They still have some talented players, most notably centre-back Diego Almeida, but he is only 17 years old right now and only participated in four games.

Juvenil A’s Youth League campaign ends with a 3–2 loss away against Bayern, who still ends last in the group. Barça end 3rd. Hope to see better European results next season, but they’re at least doing very well in their League campaign.
— La Masia (@Youngcules) December 8, 2021

This early Youth League exit is a disappointment, but it is explainable and it should be pointed out that the same group of players are going strong in the league, sitting second in their group. There is talent coming through La Masia. The issue is that some of the youngsters have come out so mature that they are already in the first team or B team.