In the 14th minute of Barcelona’s game against Levante on 25 November 2012 Martín Montoya replaced Dani Alves to complete a significant moment in the history of the club. For the first time in Barça’s history, the entire first team comprised of players who had graduated through the club’s historic La Masia academy. Two goals from Lionel Messi and one each from Andrés Iniesta and Cesc Fàbregas sealed a comfortable 4-0 victory on the way to Barcelona’s 22nd league title.

Víctor Valdés, Montoya, Carles Puyol, Gerard Piqué, Jordi Alba, Xavi, Sergio Busquets, Iniesta, Messi, Pedro and Fàbregas were the 11 players would go down in folklore as the realisation of Barcelona’s academy-based approach proposed by Johan Cruyff in the late 1970s. Pep Guardiola, the man who had given debuts to a lot of the players before handing the reins to Tito Vilanova, knew better than anyone what representing Barcelona and Catalan pride meant, having progressed through La Masia himself before amassing over 300 appearances for the club.

Not all of the players were born in Barcelona; Messi travelled over from Argentina as a 13-year-old. Neither had they all gone straight into the first team; Alba was brought back to the club from Valencia at a cost of €14m, Piqué came to the first team via Manchester United and Fàbregas had captained Arsenal before playing for Barcelona. However, they all understood the ethos instilled by Cruyff’s philosophy and nurtured by Guardiola and his coaches, including the sadly departed Vilanova.

Barcelona’s only other transfer outlay before the 2012-13 season – aside from Alba – was the €18m spent to buy Alex Song from Arsenal. Marc Muniesa, Cristian Tello, Jonathan dos Santos, Marc Bartra and Montoya were all promoted to the first-team squad to boost Vilanova’s options. They stormed to the Liga title with 100 points, 15 more than arch-rivals Real Madrid.

The following season saw a similar transfer structure under Tata Martino, who took over from Vilanova in the summer of 2013 in what was a difficult managerial transition. Neymar picked Barcelona over a host of Europe’s elite clubs, while Rafinha, Sergi Roberto, Oier Olazábal and Gerard Deulofeu were promoted from Barcelona B to the senior squad.

However, the 2013-14 window was significant for two reasons. Firstly, Thiago Alcântara, the regal playmaker who was raised in La Masia as the heir to Xavi and Iniesta, followed Guardiola to Bayern Munich for €30m. That Thiago saw first-team opportunities limited enough to leave the Camp Nou, despite the advancing years of Xavi and Iniesta, was a worrying sign for a club that had built a reputation on an unwavering trust in youth.

Secondly, and more importantly, Neymar’s transfer from Santos turned into a boardroom disaster. Sandro Rosell was forced to stand down as president after the €57.1m transfer fee quoted turned out to be closer to €100m. Lawsuits were brought against several of the parties involved in the deal, including Rosell and his successor, Josep Maria Bartomeu, and Neymar’s father.

Barcelona were hit with a transfer ban that would stop them from registering players until January 2016. Planning ahead before the ban was handed down, the club spent almost €170m on Luis Suárez, Jérémy Mathieu, Thomas Vermaelen, Ivan Rakitic, Marc-André ter Stegen, Claudio Bravo and Douglas.

To make way for the influx of new players, La Masia graduates Fàbregas, Tello, Bojan Krkic, Jonathan, Olazábal, Isaac Cuenca, Denis Suárez, Deulofeu, Puyol and Valdés left the club to either retire or pursue careers away from the Camp Nou. Even with the transfer ban in place, Barça have showed few signs of halting their transfer activity, signing Arda Turan from Atlético Madrid for £24m and Aleix Vidal from Sevilla for £16m. There are rumours that Paul Pogba may join them from Juventus and that Pedro could leave for Chelsea.

Again, La Masia graduates are leaving the club, with Xavi moving to Qatar to play for Al Sadd, Deulofeu moving to Everton on a permanent basis and Montoya, the player who completed the academy puzzle in November 2012, joining Internazionale. So, with a transfer ban in place and the constant pressure applied by a free-spending Real Madrid, the obvious question is: are Barça moving away from their academy-based approach?

On the face of it, the faith shown in their youth products looks to be in decline. Only Munir El Haddadi, who supported Real Madrid and was discovered by Atlético, and Rafinha, who moved to Barcelona from Brazil aged 13, were able to make an impact last season, with other promising youngsters Sandro Ramírez, Adama Traoré and Sergi Samper finding first-team chances incredibly rare.

Samper is a prime example of a player who might need to leave the Camp Nou to fulfil his undoubted potential. The 20-year-old’s positional sense and technical ability have long made him a standout player for Barcelona B, but he is now at an age where he needs to be playing regular first team football.

The arrival of Turan only knocks Samper further down the pecking order and in danger of following the same path as Sergi Roberto who, at 23, looks to be leaving Barcelona despite once being marked as a future star. The conundrum that faces young players such as Munir and Adama is that they need to be playing regularly to realise their potential but are competing against a frontline of Suárez, Messi and Neymar.

Of the recent graduates to make the step up from Barcelona B to the senior side, only Bartra can consider himself anything like a regular, and even that is at a push. Alba, Barça’s undisputed first choice left-back, had to leave Catalonia to return a better player. Álex Grimaldo looks to have the best chance of establishing himself as a regular in the first-team squad given Barcelona’s lack of depth in the full-back department, but that was what people thought of Montoya and he now finds himself playing his football elsewhere.

Samper, Sandro and Munir all have the ability to become mainstays in the Barcelona squad but it remains to be seen whether they will play enough football to reach their potential.

It is too simple to say that Barcelona are being forced into a shift in mentality due to Real Madrid’s galáctico approach, because that has always been the Madrid way, even when Guardiola’s crop of La Masia graduates were in their pomp. There may well be a political element creeping into the Camp Nou, with prospective and current presidents keen to stamp their mark on their time in office with a marquee signing.

However, the likely answer is that Barcelona enjoyed a golden generation, the likes of which we would be very lucky to see again, as Manchester United’s class of 1999 and Ajax’s class of 1995 can attest to. For a club to be blessed with so many outstanding talents from their academy takes hard work, dedication and cerebral coaching, but it also takes a huge chunk of luck. In modern football, where television and prize money is gargantuan and winning is everything, would Barcelona supporters be happy sticking with their academy approach to the detriment of their domination of world football?

For some Barcelona supporters the lack of home-grown players coming through into the first team will be seen as a worrying trend. Others will be gleeful at the chance to see Turan, a magician of a midfielder, put on the famous Barcelona shirt, unperturbed by the knowledge that someone like Samper has been forced out because of his move. The next 12 months will be pivotal in the medium-term future of La Masia and its famed productivity.

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