Recently "The CIES Football Observatory" released their annual list of the most productive football training centers and academies. Real Madrid's "La Fabrica" is the most productive, with La Masia following in second and Manchester United's academy in third place.

La Fabrica has produced, at this very moment, 41 players across the 5 big leagues in Europe. La Masia has 37, and Manchester united 34.

(source: http://bit.ly/2fIhphU )

I know I had a number of discussions with a few people here about how overhyped La Masia is, who have produced only one great class of graduates. Never before have they done such a thing, and will probably never do it again. The point of those discussions was the fact that people were rating La Masia higher than the academies of such constant talent producing places such as Ajax, Benfica, Sporting, and etc.

By the way, if we broaden the parameters from top 5 Euroepan Leagues to top 31 divisions all over the World, Ajax is number one. Theirs is an academy that always, always produced great world class talent. Their consistency in doing so is unmatched by anyone.

But anyway, I am a Madrista, and I wanted to share an article I stumbled across, which I'm sure was written and published in part due to the report that La Fabrica produces more and better quality players than La Masia. Class ofXavi, and Messi was always an outlier. If anyone of you Barca fans dare to say quality over quantity.. we can compare players. Sergi Roberto with Carvajal, Asensio, Morata, and etc. You don't want to go there.
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**

SECRETS OF LA FABRICA

**

By Richard Fitzpatrick / Photography by Ramiro Iriniz – Bleacher Report

As you fly over Madrid’s international airport, there is a patch of velvet-green playing fields enclosed by a string of road arteries and unending yellowish-brown scrubland. This little oasis is Ciudad Real Madrid, home to the great football club’s training ground and youth academy—the fabled La Fabrica.

Madrid's biggest stars, including Cristiano Ronaldo and Gareth Bale, as well as club legend Raul—himself a graduate of La Fabrica—live nearby in the gated communities of La Finca. A handful of tomorrow’s football heroes are being meticulously sculpted in their image close by.

La Fabrica, which translates as "the factory," is home to 281 young players, including the four sons of first-team coach Zinedine Zidane. It is located in Valdebebas, an urban development on the northeast outskirts of the Madrid's city centre, where the facility set up its new home a decade ago.

The attention to detail at La Fabrica is remarkable. One hundred percent of the space used at Ciudad Real Madrid—which caters for 13 football teams, from seven-year-olds up to the club’s reserve team, Castilla—has direct natural lighting. All but one of the 12 floodlit pitches have the same dimensions as the playing surface at the Santiago Bernabeu Stadium. Eight of these pitches use the same natural grass as the Bernabeu, which is imported from the Netherlands. The other four are laid with turf.

There is a weather station to regulate irrigation of the pitches and ensure the temperature of the buildings is constant. A hydrotherapy area includes four swimming pools, a sauna, two small baths (hot and cold) and a Turkish bath. Shiny, grey walkways guide you around the campus. Stylish water fountains at its entrance gush close to a discrete headstone of Alfredo Di Stefano, whose name adorns the 6,000-seat stadium where Castilla play. The gym at the facility is easily as long as a Luka Modric cross-field pass.

Academy players bring only their football boots to training. All their training gear is provided by staff, who take it away after each training session to be dry-cleaned. The residences at La Fabrica are equipped with games rooms and cinema, among other leisure amenities, to help the occupants unwind.

Flourishes everywhere suggest hotel-type luxury and relaxation, but the feeling in the air at this remote, sterile complex, which is protected by high railings and security guards, is like that of a space-program facility. It reeks of serious endeavour. There are vocations afoot within.

On arriving at Ciudad Real Madrid for their first day, academy players stop at a security turnstile on the first floor of the main building and are told as they pass through it that their moms and dads can’t go any further: "When you pass through this gate, you are no longer a son of your parents; you are now a player of Real Madrid."

The hard work has just begun.

One of 12 training pitches at La Fabrica.

La Fabrica's dream factory, like all elite football academies, is an unforgiving place. The average stay for those living at the facility is three years. Currently 82 boys (65 footballers and 17 basketball players), drawn from countries as far away as Norway and Paraguay, live full-time at Ciudad Real Madrid.

Ignacio Martin arrived in August 2008. He had just turned 15 and was accompanied by his 14-year-old brother Eduardo. They had won the football lottery. The brothers had been selected to join La Fabrica, leaving behind family life on the island of Tenerife.

Ignacio was awestruck. Some of the other boys he joined for his first training session at Madrid had already been exposed through Canal+ TV coverage of youth-team games. Now he was among them.

"I remember it was a shocking experience to walk inside and see that you’re going to be playing with these guys," he says. "They were already stars. If a player—who might be 13 or 14 years old—has a good tournament on television, the media will say, 'This guy is going to be the next Cristiano Ronaldo, the next big player in La Liga.'

"Seven of the Spain under-15 national team were in that locker room, including Jese, Enrique Castano and Diego Llorente, a centre-back for Malaga. Once you go into the locker room and you see you’re going to be playing alongside these guys, it’s such a weird feeling. You’re scared because you don’t know if you’re going to be good enough. At the same time, you’re ready to take the challenge."

The annual cost for a young player’s schooling and accommodation is between €35,000 to €40,000, excluding the maintenance costs for the club’s training facility at Valdebebas. When Ignacio signed up, the club covered all his accommodation costs, travel expenses and school fees for the year. They also gave him a monthly allowance of €200. For some overseas players, Madrid will pay to relocate their entire family to nearby apartments.

All academy players pass through the security turnstyle on arrival at La Fabrica.

Ignacio recalls team-mates being given €500 to spend each month on product catalogues from their brand sponsors. He heard of an older boy at the academy who’d bought a new Audi, even though he didn’t have a driving licence. The distraction of unimaginable riches comes early, and the best of the youngsters have to deal with premature star status.

"When you are very young, it suddenly changes from a game that you enjoy to a game that you get money for," says Roberto Rojas, who arrived as an 11-year-old, played with Real Madrid’s first team in the late 1990s and coached at the academy for six years. "When money is part of the game, you need to have your head very well furnished.

"You’re talking about players who don’t have the maturity to deal with all the things that can land on your head. One day, an interview with a journalist, another day you’re asked to go on TV. It’s not easy when you’re so young. Then things start happening like agents getting involved, they start earning big money. Then a young player starts getting a swelled head. It’s difficult to assimilate all these changes when you’re so young."

Ignacio and his youth-academy team-mates living at La Fabrica lived an ordered, structured existence. Training, school and meals, then bed. Lifelong friendships were forged, he says, and petty, perverse cruelties endured.

"I remember one day this kid peed in his bed while he was sleeping. That was the funniest thing, but I don’t know what that guy must have been feeling. His parents were far away. He was alone. He was around 13 at the time and he had all these guys around him making fun of him. Looking back it must have been really hard for him. How do you deal with that?

"Boys couldn’t bear the pressure. They got into fights with each other. Two guys—who, funnily enough, were good friends—used to lock the door and start beating each other up just because there was so much pressure, so much testosterone, rivalries, competition between players."

The class of 2015-16 pictured at La Fabrica, with goalkeepers in green.

To keep his spirits up, Ignacio would sing motivational songs to himself on the 45-minute ride to training—convincing himself over and over again that this was what he truly wanted. His season was pockmarked with injuries, among them tendinitis, pulled calf muscles and a sprained ankle. He partly attributes these problems to a poor diet and a patchy sleep pattern. He regrets that more effort wasn’t spent exploring the causes of players’ injuries, but does say the academy’s medics were always first-rate in their treatment.

La Fabrica's medical team’s resources are the envy of La Liga. "They have the most avant-garde facilities in their field," says Juan Muro Zabaleta, who worked as a physio for Real Madrid’s first team from 1992-2015. I have spoken with the physiotherapists of Getafe and Atletico Madrid because I know them, and they’ve told me that their facilities are not as high-tech as Real Madrid’s. It’s incredible—the facilities, the club, the hotel, the residences. Everything is first-class."

Dr. Jaime Abascal, La Fabrica’s medical doctor, says muscle injuries—and particularly hamstring injuries—are the most common among the academy players. He singles out two advanced areas the medical team works on to get injured players back on the pitch as quickly as possible.

"In the last few years, there has been a lot of progress in regenerative therapies. There is enough scientific basis for us to practice these treatments. ...They’re producing better results."

Ignacio's results on the pitch weren’t good enough. At the end of the season, he was released—one of five or six from 23 in his squad to suffer the fate. He is now studying law at University College London in England. Almost half of his brother’s group were cut adrift the same summer. The pair were part of a numbers game.

"We were racehorses," he says. "I knew it would be competitive, but I didn’t know it would be that competitive at such a young age. It was hard, insane competition. Players were competing against each other, making negative comments about each other even during a game instead of encouraging each other. It didn’t lead to good team chemistry.

"Even at such a young age, we were playing at psychological tactics with other guys who were competing for the same position as you on the field, say, as a right-back or centre-back. You tried to delegitimise the other guy as much as possible, making him insecure. Kids being bad, but with a purpose: 'I’m here to stay. I’ll work harder than you. I’ll do anything as long as I’m the one who stays and you are the one who leaves.'

"It was survival of the fittest."

Ignacio says the coaches were "indifferent" to the Darwinian struggle unfolding among their players. "I remember a game we had in Parla. I wasn’t a starter. I came on in the second half. My mind wasn’t in the game. I played badly. On the Monday after it, I was already dreading training.

"One of the comments my coach made that evening was: 'If it depended on me, I would send some of you guys back to your f--king home.' You being 15, and being away from your parents, knowing that your stay in Real Madrid was being jeopardised by your actions or your inability to cope or that you might not be as good as you thought you were, those comments can really hurt you."

A changing room at La Fabrica.

Paco Pavon, a central defender who picked up a Champions League winners' medal in 2002 and made over 100 appearances for Real Madrid, was 10 years old when he joined La Fabrica. He acknowledges the campus is a school of hard knocks, which feeds into the DNA of a Real Madrid player. A never-say-die attitude is a prerequisite.

"At Real Madrid—in any Real Madrid team—it must always fight until the end, to try to win," he says. "And there are many times that, without the team playing particularly well, they win. So, in the first team, where they are totally professional, the notion of coaching doesn't make any sense because the players are already complete players. They can improve their skills a tiny bit, but what you want is the result. It is a business. You have to win.

"In other academies, the most important thing is the process, not the result. But here in Real Madrid, when I was here, the most important thing was winning. Sure, the player’s coaching is very important—in order to create good habits so when the player gets to the premier division he has a good knowledge of what football is about. ... The two things go together [coaching and winning]. It is not one or the other. The two of them have to happen. I mean, you can train players well, but if you don't win, in here people won’t be happy.”

Pavon learned his trade at La Fabrica's old training ground, Ciudad Deportiva—a plot of land that club president Florentino Perez sold at the turn of the millennium. It was a smart piece of business that helped wipe away club debts of approximately half a billion euros and left the Madrid skyline with four towers. The towers are nicknamed after the galacticos—Luis Figo, Zidane, the Brazilian Ronaldo and David Beckham—signings that defined Perez’s first, eventful stint as president.

Paco Pavon (back row, third from left) lines up for Real Madrid in 2005 alongside the likes of Roberto Carlos, Zinedine Zidane, David Beckham, Raul and Ronaldo. Photo courtesy of Getty Images.

To offset the expense by Perez of buying so many galactic stars for the team, a string of low-salaried La Fabrica graduates were blooded alongside them, accounting for 12 of the 25-member squad during the 2003-04 season—an increase of 50 percent on the homegrown players featured during the 2000-2002 seasons. Pavon became a byword for them.

"Florentino created this term, 'the Zidanes y Pavones.' It was a policy. On one level, you had the Zidanes and on the other level you had young players like Raul Bravo and myself. I’m from Madrid. That he used my name to represent Real Madrid’s youth academy was incredible."

Pavon was plucked from a group of hopefuls who had played in a weekend tournament in Madrid when he joined La Fabrica in 1990. Each patchwork team of young boys on trial was named after one of the Real Madrid players who had just won five league titles in row. There were teams named "Michel" and "Hugo Sanchez."

Pavon—who grew up in Getafe, a satellite city that has been absorbed into Greater Madrid—arrived at La Fabrica full of nerves. It was tough, he says, although he argues kids today trying to make it have it tougher.

"Right now, I see boys that are 10 or 11 and they already have an agent. So the pressure the boy feels with an agent, with a person that follows him, with the ambition that he can make it—and many of them don't make it—so the kid goes to the field and doesn't enjoy himself. He has a burden like he is being watched all the time. I didn't have that. I enjoyed myself.

"It was more competitive in the sense that before, I believe, football players weren’t as technically proficient, but today, with those pristine pitches, it is impossible not to be more skilful. Before it was more physical and there was much more contact between players."

The years of Pavon’s childhood were a blur of football, school and homework. Class took up the daytime, followed by a 45-minute lift from his mechanic father to training in the evening (until he was 15 and could take the metro), a late dinner and then bed. "You don’t get to play with your friends in the evening like normal kids. You make a great sacrifice. You’re working from when you’re young."

Training was competitive, a dog-eat-dog world—the exact same as that experienced by Martin 15 years later. Places were always up for grabs. "It is you or it is that other kid," he remembers. "And in the end, your father tells you, 'You have to play better than him; if you don't, it is possible that he continues and not you'; if you want to stay here, you have to compete."

Pavon made the first team at 20, earning a call-up from Vicente del Bosque, who took over as first-team coach in 1999 after years as an academy coach. Del Bosque used to live in an apartment that overlooked Ciudad Deportiva, which enabled him to clock which players arrived early for training. When Pavon began rubbing shoulders with Figo, Roberto Carlos and Raul as a first-team player, he was careful not to get ahead of himself. It had been ingrained in him from the likes of Del Bosque.

"In the football world, you can get paid good money before you make the first team, but in football terms, you haven’t achieved anything so you shouldn’t drive a flash car. In my time, it wouldn't occur to me to buy the car that Raul had even though I could have afforded it from the money I got playing for Castilla.

"It didn’t occur to me because I understand that it is a status thing Raul had gained in football and that I didn’t have yet. If Vicente del Bosque, my coach at the time, saw me with a Porsche, he would have stopped me at the gate and not let me come in. For real. He has done that to players. He wouldn't let them in because those are not the values they want to teach here at Real Madrid."

A tactics board hangs in La Fabrica.

La Fabrica's scouting network spans the globe. The club's romantic lure and galactico image is also a major factor in attracting the best talent. "We have the best players so if you’re 10 or 11 years old you’ll want to be a Real Madrid player," says Pavon.

"Then there is always the player that says, 'Hey, Real Madrid wants me,' but so does another team like, say, Granada or Almeria. They’ll weigh up their options. Maybe the other team will offer the player a lot of money, and Real Madrid won’t, but Real Madrid would be the best place to learn [so he will choose Real Madrid]."

Luis Ramis—who played as a defender for Real Madrid in the early 1990s and worked at La Fabrica from 2006-16—says there isn’t much difference between the style and the quality of the training at Real Madrid and other Spanish club youth academies such as Atletico Madrid, Sevilla or Barcelona.

"For Real Madrid, the important thing is the intention to be in charge, to command the ball, to play in the opponent’s half," he says. "In this, both the canteras [youth academies] of Real Madrid and Barcelona are alike. Both want to be the boss of the game—always to be the protagonist, to attack, to grab the match by the scruff of the neck from the beginning. They train with this intention."

A typical training session at La Fabrica consists of rondos (a piggy-in-the-middle ball-keeping exercise) to warm up, working on transitions from defence to attack, more games to do with ball possession, tactical exercises and culminates in a match—usually involving half the pitch so players get more contact with the ball.

Tactically, the coaches will work on simulating match situations and creating exercises based on hypothetical scenarios. "The exercises will be competitive," says Ramis. "Exercises to do with orientation, passing. We worked a lot on players’ positioning on the pitch, tactics essentially. It all relates to what happens on Sunday, the day of a match."

There is a standard breakdown to the week’s training: Mondays are for recovery work for the guys who played and "compensation work" for the ones who didn't play. Tuesdays are a rest day. Wednesdays and Thursdays bring work on tactics with the ball. "Friday and Saturday," says Ramis, "we would do shooting, turning, actions with the eyes. All of it related to the tactics that were worked on the previous Wednesday and Thursday."

La Fabrica's vast gym facility.

La Fabrica's long history dates back to the 1950s. The academy supplied several players, including Juan Santisteban, who helped a dominant Madrid side win four of their five consecutive European Cups at the trail end of the decade. They delivered three Spanish internationals that helped lift the 1966 European Cup, one of them being Manolo Sanchis.

Sanchis' son and namesake was one of the Quinta del Buitre—five dashing young La Fabrica cadets who dazzled the Bernabeu stadium in the 1980s. Sanchis captained the club to its seventh European Cup triumph in 1998, a crown it had waited for 32 years to secure.

Several more famous graduates have followed over the last couple of decades, including Raul and Iker Casillas. From today's team you have the marauding full-back Dani Carvajal, who was selected as a 12-year-old to represent the academy at the ceremony to lay the first stone at Valdebebas in May 2004.

Carvajal, aged 12, lays the stone at La Fabrica in 2004 with Alfredo Di Stefano.

Despite these illustrious alumni, and others, La Fabrica is in the shadow of Barcelona’s vaunted cantera, La Masia, which only came to life in 1979.

La Masia, of course, featured seven of the players who helped Spain win the 2010 World Cup final in Johannesburg—Andres Iniesta, Carles Puyol, Gerard Pique, Xavi Hernandez, Sergio Busquets, Pedro and second-half substitute Cesc Fabregas, and also produced Lionel Messi, who joined as a 13-year-old in 2001.

Each year over the last decade, La Masia has provided more first-team squad players for its club than La Fabrica: 12 compared to seven (2007-2008); 11 to seven (2008-2009); 11 to four (2009-2010); 12 to six (2010-2011); 11 to five (2011-2012); 17 to five (2012-2013); 17 to nine (2013-2014); 12 to seven (2014-2015); 12 to seven (2015-2016); and 10 to eight (2016-2017).

Real Madrid’s youth academy fares better in Spain, though. This season, 41 players from La Fabrica are playing with squads in the premier division of La Liga, compared to 30 from La Masia—a ratio that is repeated in the second division of La Liga: 28 (Real Madrid) and 21 (Barca). Over the long haul, La Fabrica has a more prolific output of professional footballers. But Barca has long won a propaganda war, it seems.

"Somehow La Masia has become an internationally recognised brand, whereas La Fabrica at Valdebebas is not known so much," says Phil Kitromilides, who works as a presenter for Real Madrid TV. "Of course, it’s logical that La Masia became a big thing when you have six or seven world-class players—who are winning everything—all come through like that at the same time. It was a freak.

"Real Madrid’s international renown is for spending more money [than Barcelona]. That weighs against them in terms of people’s perception of their youth policy because people will always think, 'Ah, Real Madrid, they just go out and blow big money on the biggest players,' even though there are a number of first-team squad players that have come through recently—such as Jese, who was sold to PSG this summer for €25 million, Alvaro Morata, Carvajal, Nacho, Lucas Vazquez, Casemiro—but people won’t think about that."

"If anyone of you Barca fans dare to say quality over quantity.. we
can compare players. Sergi Roberto with Carvajal, Asensio, Morata, and
etc. You don't want to go there."

I want to ge there, cmon continue please.

The reason La Masia is more well-known than La Fabrica is because of an unnatural influx of talented players: Messi, Iniesta, and Xavi all coming out at the same time. Not to mention other world-class players like Busquets and Puyol and Fabregas (partly). La Fabrica has, however, the most players in the top two Spanish leagues from any youth system. Generally, Real Madrid produces more top-flight talent than Barcelona, but Barcelona's system is more well-known because of a stroke of fortune by the football gods.

Generally agree with you, but even as a non-Barca fan I do prefer quality over quantity. Oh, and Asensio is definitely not a Fabrica product, he was bought from RCD Mallorca a year ago..

"In other academies, the most important thing is the process, not the result. But here in Real Madrid, when I was here, the most important thing was winning. Sure, the player’s coaching is very important—in order to create good habits so when the player gets to the premier division he has a good knowledge of what football is about. ... The two things go together [coaching and winning]. It is not one or the other. The two of them have to happen. I mean, you can train players well, but if you don't win, in here people won’t be happy.”

As someone who has actually taught at an academy, this hurts my soul a little bit. Every coach I know at a high level taught with the Cryuff philosophy of "screw winning, we're trying to make better players." If that meant the star striker played right back to teach workrate and tracking back, then it was done, and if he was responsible for three goals, whatever, the lesson was learned. When you're just focusing on winning it isn't possible for that to happen.

I don't think its a coincidence that so few players from big academies actually do so well for their clubs. When you're focused on winning, you're not focused on development. That's hardly exclusive to Real Madrid though.

@Sunflash +1000 as someone would say: Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn

This guy is Barca obsessed, clearly... ;)

'Homegrown' players still at the club (13): Rafinha Alcantara, Marc Bartra, Sergio Busquets, Munir El Haddadi, Xavi Hernandez, Andres Iniesta, Jordi Masip, Lionel Messi, Martin Montoya, Gerard Pique, Sandro Ramirez, Sergi Roberto, Pedro Rodriguez

Barcelona graduates playing in Europe's top five leagues (Mikel Arteta (Arsenal), Edu Campabadal (Cordoba), Thiago Alcantara (Bayern Munich), Pepe Reina (Bayern Munich), Iago Falque (Genoa), Oier Olazabal (Granada), Ruben Rochina (Granada), Jordi Xumetra (Levante), Jose Manuel Casado (Malaga), Thiago Motta (Paris Saint-Germain), Raul Baena (Rayo Vallecano), Roberto Trashorras (Rayo Vallecano), Andreu Fontas (Celta Vigo), Sergi Gomez (Celta Vigo), Carles Planas (Celta Vigo), Isaac Cuenca (Deportivo La Coruna), Sergi Garcia (Espanyol), Manuel Lanzarote (Espanyol), Paco Montanes (Espanyol), Victor Sanchez (Espanyol), Gerard Deulofeu (Sevilla on loan from Barcelona), Fernando Navarro (Sevilla), Bojan Krkic (Stoke City), Marc Muniesa (Stoke City), Jordi Gomez (Sunderland), Ruben Ivan Martinez (Almeria), Oriol Romeu (Stuttgart on loan from Chelsea), Giovani dos Santos (Villarreal), Jonathan dos Santos (Villarreal), Javi Espinosa (Villarreal) Icardi ( Inter Milan ) Hector Bellerin ( Arsenal )
And the list is long if someone can add players that I don't remember... just to give someone a heart attack :)

Edit : Nolito, Isaac Cuenca, Sanabria, Sergi Samper... if i take time I could find 20 more.

Now Vasquez only came to Madrid at the age of 16, didnt graduated from la fabrica. Ascension graduated from Majorque, only Carvajal was from there get your fact straight.
I guess you saw FR post about Xavi Simons and you had an urgency to make a thread to satisfy your ego, congrats !

quikzyyy: I want to ge there, cmon continue please.

Continue what, quikzzy? Oh right, I completely forgot to mention the future Messi's. Bojan Krkic and Munir el Haddadi. Silly me.

JuanMata10: Generally agree with you, but even as a non-Barca fan I do prefer quality over quantity. Oh, and Asensio is definitely not a Fabrica product, he was bought from RCD Mallorca a year ago..

Everybody would prefer quality over quantity, but what I hinted at with my asking Barca fans not to go there is that clearly La Fabrica has an advantage in both quantity and quality.

Asensio was bought two years ago, when he was 18, and he has spent time in the academy. While it is true that we didn't discover him, if he does become a great star in the future (and the odds, considering how he's been playing, are in his favor), La Fabrica will have played a huge role in his development.

There is no argument against us creating you though right, Mr. Mata?

Dynastian98:The reason La Masia is more well-known than La Fabrica is because of an unnatural influx of talented players: Messi, Iniesta, and Xavi all coming out at the same time. Not to mention other world-class players like Busquets and Puyol and Fabregas (partly). La Fabrica has, however, the most players in the top two Spanish leagues from any youth system. Generally, Real Madrid produces more top-flight talent than Barcelona, but Barcelona's system is more well-known because of a stroke of fortune by the football gods.

I agree with you, one hundred thousand million percent (as my nephew would say). Barca has had one great class of graduates who turned out to be world beaters. However, you take that class out of the equation and you get to see the reality of La Masia. Statistically, you have to do this. It's called an outlier, and it is usually excluded from the data, which in this case that is judging La Masia's success rate in developing players that become world class.

Before Perez' introduced Galactico policy, Real Madrid relied mostly on the academy to develop quality players.

Here are 10 best players that have graduated from La Fabrica:

1. Emilio Butragueno.
2. Raul
3. Casillas
4. Michal (part of the 'Vultures Cohort'),
5. Vicente del Bosque
6. Manolo Sanchis
7. Guti
8. Chendo (part of the team that won 5 league titles in a row)
9. Juan Mata
10. Esteban Cambiasso

*Obviously, this list subjective^

What you will notice about these players is that they're all top top quality players, and they were developed in different footballing eras. It's not just one class, it's consistency over a great period of time. Always developing great talent. And, if La Masia is better known today, it is only today. The last decade. And La Fabrica has overtaken La Masia again, things are back to the way they always were.

Best 10 players that graduated from La Masia:

1. Lionel Messi
2. Xavi Hernandez
3. Andres Iniesta
4. Carles Puyol
5. Sergio Busquets
6. Pep Guardiola
7. Guillermo Amor
8. Gerrard Pique
9. Pedro Rodrigues
10. Victor Valdes

*subjective^

Notice how many of these players have come from one class. 8 out of the 10 best players La Masia has produced has come within the last decade or so.

Anyway, in another point, I do think that developing a winning mentality at such a young age is crucial for the eventual player to have a winning, never give, never say die attitude. If it embedded into the mind early enough, it becomes a part of the players personality, a quality that a player will consider part of his identity. Absolutely nothing wrong with that. We're not talking about a weekend club here, where the most important things are to develop as a person and have fun. This is the academy of Real Madrid, the most successful club in the history of the sport. Could you really expect anything less than a cutt-throat environment? We're not Barcelona either, putting forward a pretentious and fake 'more than a club' philosophy on our players that develop into the most terrible personalities such as Lionel Messi and Xavi. Both so arrogant, and pretend humble that when I hear them talk, I just want to punch them. As Real Madrid's philosophy is never say die, never give up, winning mentality - Barcelona's is that they are a family, a whining, complaining, while at the same time claiming to be better than everybody else and the authority on morality and community. They're all just so fake, and contradictory. Such a repulsive club.

Lionel Messi ranked 10th what a troll.
And no need to express your hate, I think everyone understood now go back to your Madridista forum where kids love to hear your Barca bashing, here it's a forum for all clubs.

^No, I made a mistake. I fixed it. I wanted to list them from 10 to 1, but for some reason it auto-corrected to 1 to 10. Don't know why it did that. Emilio Butragueño was also listed as 10th, come on. You couldn't tell it was a mistake? Well, it doesn't surprise me. Whether it be a case of lack of intelligence or..

The way you jumped the gun on that one though.. Hah. Couldn't wait, could you? I bet it made you a little happy, too. To have an excuse to call me names.

So fckn sad.

The fact you need to go 40 years back to found legends graduating from lafabrica says it all, if you did not noticed it, archrival clubs fans avoid frontal hateful threads, you wont see a Liverpool fan bashing United nor Spurs fan bashing Arsenal. Just know that if it was another club who bashed Barca for x reason it won't be as significant, its just simple gentlemen agreement in a forum where every club fan has the right to give his opinion, now if you want to bash Barca each time you are going to post something go to a Madrid forum and even there some Madrid fans will contradict you.

You could have posted a thread to only praise la fabrica and its products ruined by Perez policy but you just had to bash Barca, you are welcome then ;)

what the hell is la fabrica....

this is really getting sad for amerr30. He has the biggest hard on for real madrid, it's actually quite funny. He's shoving all this history into people's faces and trying to make it relevant and sensationalize it. Here's the thing. It's either relevant or it's not.

till they make a golden generation like la masia did to win multiple CLs, they're irrelevant. I think you're belittling how impressive it is that all those la masia players came from one class. That is seriously impressive. Madrid wishes they could do it. Instead you are just stating one "quality" player from multiple generations. Let's be realistic, you could also state one "quality" player from multiple generations that graduated from la masia PLUS one generation with 8 CL winners from one class.

La Fabrica has an advantage in both quantity and quality.

No, just keep naming me more players from La Fabrica, because I don't see them.

Asensio was bought two years ago, when he was 18, and he has spent time in the academy. While it is true that we didn't discover him, if he does become a great star in the future (and the odds, considering how he's been playing, are in his favor), La Fabrica will have played a huge role in his development.

Do you even know about your players? You bought him as an 18 year old in winter, but until the end of the season he stayed at Mallorca. The next season he was on loan at Espanyol.

WHERE DID YOUR LA FABRICA PLAYED THAT HUGE ROLE?

Fun fact: There are only three teams in La Liga without a La Fabrica graduate in their squad: Bilbao, Barcelona, and Celta. The other sixteen teams combined contain 31 graduates from La Fabrica in La Liga. Real themselves have Kiko Casilla, Alvaro Morata, Daniel Carvajal, Nacho Fernandez, Lucas Vazquez, Mariano, and Ruben Yanez. That's a total of 38 La Fabrica players plying their trade in La Liga, if Marca is correct.

You can produce many players, but that alone doesn't mean that your academy is good. I mean, United have ex-graduates all over the BPL and while many of them are quite good (e.g. Pogba, Drinkwater, Rashford, etc) others are people like Paddy McNair. He starts for a BPL side, but I'd hardly consider him a great accomplishment.

I get that e-peen is on the line here, but I'll say again what I was getting at in my initial post on this subject, big academies don't focus on proper development in youth ranks. Most of the really top players in the world today came from Dutch/Portuguese/ mid-tier Spanish academies, and this is hardly a new phenomenon. The only players who really do well in big academies are the kids who are already better than everyone else when they arrive (e.g. Messi, who if I recall was training with Barca's senior team when he was like 15 or something). For players who aren't phenomenal 15-year olds and yet still end up becoming some of the best players in world, they mostly come from academies that worked on growing their talent, not exploiting it for victory in the youth ranks.

Even worse is the integration into the first team. Using FIFA as a surprisingly good analogy in this situation, if you pick up a player in your youth academy who has great potential and whose stats look good, you will keep them around, maybe loan them out. But eventually, you'll give them a chance, and if you don't feel like they play well, or fit in your system, you move them on, usually after a trail period of only a game or so. This is not very different from the real world. A player like Rashford could have been average/bad in his game vs FC M in the Europa League last season, and United probably never would have used him again. Instead, one season on, we have a practically un-dropable 19-year old.

Real, City, and Barca can throw as much money at their academies as they want, fact is most elite young players come from somewhere else and are bought by these clubs (Iheanacho, Ronaldo, etc) and most elite 20+ year olds were never a top of a top team's academy at all.

They all suck pretty equally imo, and create underwhelming players, let alone whatever awful moral character is developed in that environment.

Top players are coming from south america in bulk, where they play football to survive. Brazil is a large exporter of players. La masia and la fabrica are pitiful compared to south american, portuguese, dutch and italian talent production. Recent revelations have recently come from france. Top players in the epl are french talent. And epl fanboys still trash ligue 1....well trash it all you want...that's where players are coming from. I somewhat agree with sunflash.

Dynast Lucas Vasquez came to Madrid at 16 and played directly for RM CF then Castilla, he is not a Fabrica product I don't know for the rest I won't search for everyone of them, what I know is that Both Barca and Madrid feed liga teams consistently for years now and it helps clubs to get proffesional players for free which increases the level of the league...
The problem of this thread is the way amerr wanted it to be, nothing constructive I think Gonzi explained it nicely, I couldn't be that cool since it's not the first attempt of this amerr dude.
But yeah, the fact Perez preference to buy icons rather than promote youngsters is a big part of la Cantera being overshadowed by la masia, until he saw what Barca was able to do and decided to change his 100% galactico policy.
Im not belittling Madrid Cantera I just read between amerr lines and made him admit his hate that leads to insta bashing Barca wich is mainly reflects a little jealousy and a refusal to share the country dominance, The cycle of being the only contender is over, and Franco era is over too, now once he will inject this in his brain everything will be okay.

Speaking of which, let's look at the 23 Ballon d'Or candidates last season and see which academies they came from...

Messi - Barcelona
Ronaldo - Sporting CP
Neymar - Santos
Lewandowski - Legia Warsaw/Delta Warsaw
Suarez - Nacional
Muller - Bayern
Neuer - Schalke
Hazard - Lille
Iniesta - Barcelona
Alexis - Cobreloa
Zlatan - Malmo
Yaya - Mimosas
Aguero - Independiente
Mascherano - River Plate
Pogba - Manchester United
Bale - Southampton
Vidal - Colo-Colo
De Bruyne - Genk
James - Envigado
Benzema - Lyon
Kroos - Hansa Rostock/Bayern
Robben - Groningen
Rakitic - Basel

The only academies to produce two players on this list are Barcelona (Messi & Iniesta) and Bayern (Muller & Kroos, but Kroos only played for Bayern's youth team for one season). All the players are from randomized places around the world, with top clubs (United, Barca, Bayern) only producing a grand total of five players out of twenty-three. I guess that goes to show just how good the youth systems of top tier clubs are...

Again I fully agree with you guys specially about South America, street football is where you lear skills and technic along futsal, the reason why Germany doesn't learn kids tactics until a certain age, they make them enjoy the game first. Our problem in Europe is that we only practice football in clubs, while most legends like Zizou learned football in the nearest small pitch of his hood. And so is Messi and many South Americans. In club you focus on shooting or discipline while on the street there is no net and you mainly Lear to break other kids legs by small space dribbling.
Combining street with academy gives you the so called world class players.
I believe what Crujf did with la masia is great, once you get used to small spaces you find it easier to play in big spaces. In Europeen ghettos they are also hungry but they play less on the street wich is a terrible mistake, okay you go Wednesday to training to practice in club but it's not enough, main tricks are learned in the street specially the way I see Football.

http://youtu.be/H0yNeBuDaO8

For me there is no coincidence no matter where you train or what you learn in the club, if you did not spend hours each day playing near your house or practicing you cant become world class, achievers are all Passionate about Football.