This is the day that Barcelona's problems with youth football started

The problem with Barcelona's youth side is not the results, but the formative process of the players. To confuse the diagnosis makes it impossible to solve the problem. The results are only one part and not the most important - that's the training process. So the problem does not reside in the bad administrative practises that the club carried out and resulted in the FIFA transfer ban, either. Those bad practises were known and covered up by the former president of the club, and perhaps also by the sporting vice-president - now president - and ignored until it was too late. The main consequences, as well as the transfer ban, are that many of the young players cannot play and some are beginning to flee. But this is not the core of the problem either. 

The basic problem of Barcelona's youth football lies in the training. Apart from a brief period under the presidency of Gaspart, the cantera has never been in as more danger from changes than the first team squad. Even in the darkest moments between 2000-2003, nobody touched the traning structure. That was until 2010, when Sandro Rosell intervened. At the time Jose Ramon Alexanko ran youth football at Barcelona, a straight man. As everyone does, he had his flaws, but his uprightness, honesty, determination and clarity of thought were unquestionable.

Under Alexanko, a child was a child, a father was a father, training was above everything else, and there was only one more important thing: Barça. Not money, not tantrums, not poses, not cool stuff; no outbursts or threats could twist the will of the cantera's director. You could get a more modern person, but not a straighter one. Whoever did it right, paid their dues, was the most promising diamond. And whoever needed help always received it. Alexanko was the straightest and he was beheaded. And that was the day the problem started.