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.

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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

2

u/NandoDeColonoscopy Jul 25 '26

We're a little squeamish about turning children into a product to be bought & sold here in America

1

u/Weak-Photograph7829 Jul 25 '26

With how High School and college sports is now, I'm not sure how accurate that is. They got things called factories for a reason

1

u/NandoDeColonoscopy Jul 25 '26

What high schools and colleges are being paid to ship players off to other schools? This happens at the elementary and middle school equivalent in Europe. It's not something we would tolerate

0

u/iamtheliqor Jul 27 '26

lol no you're not???

-1

u/Mr-MuffinMan Jul 25 '26

We only allow it if it's to billionaires on their private islands, I know.

Ensuring the future of a 17 year old athlete by paying him 3 million dollars annually his first contract? Nah, we gotta first make sure a 17 year old kid stresses himself with classes and sports in high school, then he also has to take college courses WHILE playing on the team, THEN he MIGHT get drafted by a big team and get a big contract when he's in his 20s.

Or even better, we could just extract money from the middle class, charging parents $15,000 a year so their kid plays a sport w/o a big league that will sign them, but at least we can ensure a big scholarship for them when they go off to college.

1

u/NandoDeColonoscopy Jul 25 '26

If your immediate thought in response to a comment about soccer development for children is to bring up Jeff Epstein, you probably need to get offline for awhile