Tottenham smashing BARCELONA's finest young talent

Coulthirst with a perfect hat-trick and now it's 4-0 to Spurs.

im involved in grass roots football and tbh this thing about following the barcelona/spanish game is bollx as in another 5 years half the team will have gone and they dont have much youth coming through as spurs are showing tonight, the blue print has and always will be the dutch philosophy especially as cruyff was the one who took the football over to spain !

losethelot, they don't keep the vast majority of them because they aren't good enough for the Barcelona first team. It's a production line that produces significant amounts of money enabling them to finance those that they do keep or buy in for the first team. However if you look around Europe you will find many a player from the Barcelona production line player at the top-level. I think it's also a bit of a myth that they make them, the vat majority already have considerably natural talent before they even get through the door at the Barca academy.

lots of typo's in that, sorry!

Just a matter of time before Spurs conquer Europe.

Nov 7, 2012 -- 6:51PM, Mr Eboue wrote:

Just a matter of time before Spurs conquer Europe.

I absolutely agree.

Barcelona don't have youth coming through?

Please, don't talk such utter nonsense.  It's clear you've absolutely no involvement with "grass roots football" to come out with such a moronic statement.  I take it you're not aware of Sergi Samper, Deulofeu, Alcantara, Dongou or Grimaldo - all of whom are ready graduates of La Masia?  They are all 17/18 and behind them are another bunch of 14yo's equally ready to graduate.

Spurs also have an excellent youth set-up, commanded by the exceptional Alex Inglethorpe, yet it's a fact of youth level football that 90% of them will hardly ever graduate into the first team.  They excel at this level as the physical demands are not as high as senior football is in England.  However, in Spain, it is more technical and therefore they - in this case Barcelona - have a far higher level of graduation.

These are facts.  Your statement about Barcelona lacking talent is the most amusing and embarrassing claim I have read for quite some time on this forum.

Barcelona dont play many players who are eligible for this competition.

They tend to play the younger players and the other 17/18 year olds play in the B team.