Barça and Boca seal the deal in Buenos Aires

Jordi Mestre, FC Barcelona youth football director, said that this “project requires time and patience”.

The two clubs are both pleased with the agreement, the deal shows that these “two powerful clubs are betting on football in a decisive way”.

Jordi Mestre, FC Barcelona youth football director; Daniel Angelici, Boca Juniors President and Jordi Raffo, Boca Juniors youth football general coordinator, presented the agreement between the two clubs in Buenos Aires.

Jordi Mestre highlighted the historic dedication of FC Barcelona to football youth systems: “it’s a big day for FC Barcelona because the club has relied on our youth system for a long time and the truth is that it has paid dividends. We have club players that are world champions and that’s due to many years of work.”

The Barça director said that he’s pleased with the Boca-Barça agreement, “two powerful clubs are betting on football in a decisive way. I hope that it [the agreement] is successful, it’s a project that requires time and patience. Evidently, the results will come if the work we put in is good. For us it’s a satisfaction to be able to share this project with a club like Boca. It’s very exciting that the model that we’ve been working on all these years can be shared and used.”

Angelici, Boca Juniors President, talked about the details of the deal that was agreed upon last August, when he spoke to President Sandro Rosell. “We started to have a couple of concrete ideas that we could sign off on, an agreement of collaboration for our youngsters,” said Angelici.

Raffo, technical director of the project, says that a club like Barça is an example of “achieving that old dream of having the same style of football in all of Argentina’s football divisions.” Raffo praised the Catalan club’s model: “there is a process for forming players, a methodological process, part of it is in the infrastructure and in organization, FC Barcelona have shared it with us and we’re transplanting it to a number of footballers that Boca have been working with for a while.”

The agreement between FC Barcelona and Boca Juniors is a strategic alliance that binds both clubs to the task of teaching young footballers, through which Barça will transfer the ‘La Candela’ project to CA Boca Juniors. In return, FC Barcelona will have priority on future transfers of those players that will now don the Boca strip. (via FCBarcelona.com)