For all the talk of Barcelona's famed youth system, coach Pep Guardiola has been one of the biggest spenders in Europe during his tenure.
AS says during his time in charge, Guardiola has spent a staggering €277 million on 13 signings - with several flops failing to make the grade, including Alex Hleb, Dmtryo Chygrynskiy and Martin Caceres.
Even when they have the best youth academy in Europe they still can't resist scratching that particular pulsating, tumorous itch that wants, nay, DEMANDS them to spend. Goes to show how much willpower (or just sheer, bloody-minded stubbornness) Wenger possesses.
Just because they have very good players coming up the youth ranks doesn't mean they won't spend. I bet this bull$hit article was written by a jealous Madridista. Look, you have 1 homegrown player in your starting lineup and Barca has 8. Barca has even more in their first team squad. Madrid has a lot too... like Casillas and........... and............ and.............????
*crickets*
Yeah, Madrid has 1 *good* youth player in their whole team and the 2 or 3 others are bullcr@p players not worthy of being footballers.And Arsenal? They don't use their own youth players. They steal youngsters from other clubs and play them in their B team and when they mature, they play them in their first team. After 5 years, we'd be hearing about how much they "developed" these crop of stolen youngsters and that without them, these youngsters would not be the star they are today even though they were already promising players when Arsenal poached them.
Bullcr@p
"So much for youth system" <= Makes the article incredibly biased but it is true.
Who the heck is Martin Caceres ?
All the big teams spend
Barca spent 40M and 70M on David Villa and Ibra
Real Madrid spent a fortune on Ronaldo
And lots of other clubs...That doesn't mean Barca have a bad youth system (They have the best or 2nd)