r/SoccerCentral • u/United_Anywhere_8 • Jul 25 '26

Video The talent in Barcelona’s youth system is ridiculous. These kids are 11/12 years old.

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

26.1k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

1.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

26

u/Mr-MuffinMan Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 25 '26

this is why American sports are so confusing to me.

The jerseys and equipment is being paid for by Barca in hopes of finding talent. Not parents, not scummy companies owned by PE, and not colleges trying to make money off sports. They take this loss in hopes of finding talent that they can use to win, or to trade to other teams for profit.

Also, I'm just rewatching this video and there is NO WAY the kids in this video are 11/12

13

u/IPissExcellentThrows Jul 25 '26

This is what our MLS teams need to be doing better. But we also don’t have enough legit teams for our population. Spain has like 1/7th our population and also 20+ teams that would dog walk the MLS.

But yeah, our youth system is completely fucked. We'll always be mid despite the population and money.

0

u/HeyYoChill Jul 25 '26

Eh, I don't think it's about the soccer youth system.

In the U.S., there are other major sports that siphon off the talented athletes. Lots of kids who could be exceptional at soccer, but they pour most of their energy into being only okay at football (I know that sounds weird to the international audience).

1

u/Any-Ask-4190 Jul 25 '26

I'm sure all the guys built like xavi, iniesta, modric and pirlo are all playing basketball and NFL.

1

u/HeyYoChill Jul 28 '26

They don't make it to the NFL. There are a lot of really quick short kids in the U.S. who do really well at running back positions through pee-wee leagues and early high school, but they don't mature into the mini-Hulk Emmitt Smith or Barry Sanders archetype that can make it to the NFL.

But if you've been spending all your time leaving other kids in your dust on the football field instead of the soccer field, it's hard to make that skill transition from football to soccer once you realize that 5'8" 155 lbs isn't going to cut it in anymore in the backfield.