It is worth mentioning that FC Barcelona, unlike the biased and discriminatory
practices of American sports, has allocated 4 spots in the residency program
to develop professional basketball players. This will also expand with the
doubling of the residency. 1
As a result of its efforts, FC Barcelona, the Spanish Soccer Leagues, and the
Spanish National Teams have benefited from an increasingly talented player
pool unparalleled in the world of sports. While much focus is on the Ajax
system, Spanish teams, including those of lower divisions have similar youth
development programs. A similar success story can be found in FC Barcelona's
arch-rival Club (And I hesitate to put the name in the same study),
Real Madrid. But the list goes on; Kasey Keller's current club Rayo Vallecano
has a program, as does C.A Osasuna of the Spanish Second Division.
FC Barcelona's cross town rivals when this author was there, RCD Espanyol
competed for the same talent to bring in to their system. Perhaps one of the
better known regional programs that is in part responsible for filling half
of the First Division's Goalkeeper ranks is sponsored by Real Sociedad. What
makes this club unique was that it only admitted Basque children into their
program. The height of their success, and success of their club system came
in 1980-81 and 1981-1982 when the first team won the Spanish Primera Liga two
years in a row, both times having the league's most prolific scorer and least
scored upon keeper. In both cases, the forward Roberto Lopez Ufarte and
Goalkeeper Luis Miguel Arkonada were home grown talent brought through the
youth program. In fact, what makes the accomplishment that much greater the
entire Club had a no foreigner's policy. In other words, the entire squad was
made up of domestic (Spanish and Basque) talent.
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1 Could this be the beginning of the end of the dominance of US basketball?
I will leave that to Futurists and Historians in the future. An interesting
trend is developing in the US Basketball world that began with the fielding
of "Dream Teams" in the Olympic games. It was necessary to demonstrate to the
world our supremacy in a sport that we invented, of course. The other trend
is the increasing need of NBA teams to discover talent at an early age.
Perhaps they should take a lesson from soccer and realize that "discovering"
players is a far more inefficient way of filling the professional ranks than
creating them. However, it can be said that European clubs have something
that US culture lacks in general, the sports and media establishments in
specific, and that is plain old, time tested, reliable patience. Player
development is to investing in the future, what discovering players are to
playing the lottery. How about that for a non-culturally biased SAT question?
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