Spanish clubs boast some of the finest academies in the world and these football schools provide the link for local youngsters to go from a young matchgoing supporter to becoming a first-team legend.
There are several obvious examples of this. Dani Carvajal, who laid one of the first stones at Real Madrid City two decades ago, is now a captain of the club and scored in their most recent Champions League final triumph. Meanwhile, Lamine Yamal of FC Barcelona is wowing fans around the world with his displays, and he’s doing it while representing the club he grew up supporting. Iago Aspas at RC Celta or Mikel Oyarzabal at Real Sociedad continue to score goals for their childhood clubs. Plus, approximately half of the current Athletic Club squad came through the academy at Lezama to realise their dream of representing Los Leones.
Now, a new report from the CIES Football Observatory has provided extra context which shows just how much Spanish clubs are fielding locally trained players. The report has created a “territorial anchorage index”, which is calculated from the proportion of national players and club-trained nationals among those fielded by each team in their domestic league over the last year. It explained that: “Nationals are players who have grown up in the association of their home club, while club-trained nationals are those who have played for at least three seasons between the ages of 15 and 21 in their club of employment.”
In the ranking for this index, seven of the top 10 clubs across Europe’s five major leagues are LALIGA EA SPORTS clubs. Athletic Club, who famously employ a policy of fielding Basque and locally trained players, have an index of 99.5, and sit in first place. The rest of the top 10 is as follows: CA Osasuna (index of 86.9), AS St-Etienne (77.8), Real Sociedad (76.7), Le Havre AC (70.9), Montpellier HSC (70.3), FC Barcelona (68.9), RC Celta (68.6), Valencia CF (68.6) and RCD Espanyol (63.0).
If expanding to view the entire top 20, three more Spanish clubs appear: UD Las Palmas in 11th with an index of 61.8, Deportivo Alavés in 16th with 53.0 and Getafe CF in 18th with 52.4. In other words, half of the clubs currently competing in LALIGA EA SPORTS feature in the top 20 for Europe’s major leagues when it comes to how many “local” players they are fielding week in week out.
When narrowing in to look exclusively at club-trained players, the Spanish dominance in this ranking is even more striking. Eight out of the top 10 of the ranking for club-trained players – filtering out the nationally-trained element – are Spanish clubs. Real Sociedad sit top this time, with a percentage of 48.6 club-trained players. They’re then followed by: Athletic Club (47.2), CA Osasuna (38.7), FC Barcelona (38.2), AS St-Etienne (36.8), Valencia CF (35.0), RC Celta (33.3), Montpellier HSC (30.0), Real Madrid (29.0) and RCD Espanyol (25.0).
What does this all mean? Well, this report makes clear that there are many clubs in LALIGA EA SPORTS who are placing their trust in their own academy graduates and also in other footballers trained within the Spanish football federation. That means the line-ups in Spain’s top divisions are packed with players who care that little bit extra about the badge they’re representing, players who can quickly became fan favourites because they too were once sitting in the same stands cheering the team on.