The quarry is to football what reinforced concrete is to a building. The material on which the best competitions in the world are built and supported. Without its grassroots football, whose best model is projected every day in the Spanish youth teams, LaLiga Santander and LaLiga SmartBank would not be the same. Nor its potential. Because the quarry is not just a resource, it is a model of success: a breath of life on which many teams base their essence. The quarry breathes air into the clubs of both competitions and promoting it is one of its greatest assets.
They know this well in the LaLiga Sports Projects Department, where they have been focusing for six years on a methodological and development model for young players that is unique in the world. A formula without which you cannot understand its essence, its technique and all the magic that has turned the quarries into generators of legends. “Current models of training and talent development place Spanish youth teams in the elite of world grassroots football,” they say.
Each club or academy has its own model, largely adapted to its particular context, its philosophy and its specific needs or objectives. However, LaLiga has detected that there are elements common to all. “Differentiating factors that explain a large part of the success,” they clarify.
Firstly, the focus on comprehensive training. In Spain, all areas of young player development are addressed: technical, tactical or physical, but also academic, personal, psychological or emotional.
Secondly, the early detection of talent, something especially important in an increasingly globalized football and in which millions of data and content are available to everyone. Finally, the personalization of training. “The player is the project, and the entire training and development system revolves and adapts around him, placing the person, the individual, as the axis or core of the process,” they explain from LaLiga.
The speed with which today's football evolves poses, however, a new challenge: the search for new formulas that make it grow and improve. “The objective is to generate collective intelligence among the LaLiga youth teams that serves to improve grassroots football in Spain,” explains Juan Florit, head of the LaLiga Sports Projects Department. A 'common place' that they have nurtured for four seasons through youth academy meetings, the seed of the LaLiga Training Hub.
A project that is born, precisely, from this effort to integrate and share experiences and concerns around the formation of the quarry. “We detected that a common demand among the teams was to be able to offer quarry professionals specific and adapted training,” explains Florit. No sooner said than done. During the first half of 2020 - and following the work carried out at the last Quarry Meeting - a technical commission was created with all interested clubs to build and design the training program.
This is how LaLiga Training Hub was born, which integrates multidisciplinary, exclusive and free training for the different professionals who make up the grassroots football sports areas (both men's and women's) of LaLiga clubs. In it, the quarry is the beginning and the end. And the clubs are an essential part: the modules, themes, formats, speakers and institutions that are part of this training have been agreed upon with them. “We started it in September electronically due to the health situation and the response could not have been better, since representatives of the 42 LaLiga Santander and LaLiga Smartbank clubs have been present in the different modules,” says Florit.
The objective is threefold: share, generate and exchange. “We believe that there are three fundamental processes for the growth of national football,” adds Florit. The demand is maximum: “We want something new, to provide new formulas. “We want to move as far away as possible from traditional discourses or those that do not fit the current moment that our football is experiencing,” he clarifies. To do this, they evaluated and analyzed the most referenced clubs, making a mix of national and international models. “We have always been a reference, and we continue to be, but why not investigate, know and learn from other models,” LaLiga highlights.
Generating knowledge is key. “Although today we are a reference, if we are not eager to improve and continue taking steps forward, sooner or later we will be left behind,” Florit assesses. A level of maximum demand that demands more professional profiles articulated at the service of the player: coaches, analysts, physical trainers, psychologists, etc. Through LaLiga Training Hub they already have training support that covers and responds to their areas of knowledge.
One of those clubs is Real Sporting. For eight years, Manuel Sánchez Murias has been their youth academy manager and one of the people who best knows what grassroots football means to a club. “LaLiga Training Hub shows a vocation of LaLiga and all the clubs to be up to date with something that is our present and our future,” he describes. “Because the demands are getting greater without forgetting how the kids have changed,” he adds.
The personal dimension of the boys is unquestionable. “The young people of 20 years ago have nothing to do with those of 10 years ago and those of now. They must arrive at professional football in the best conditions and as prepared as possible. “LaLiga has known how to create a space to share,” highlights Sánchez, head of one of the clubs with the most youth ‘culture’. “For our fans, the youth team and the player from [the Mareo Soccer School] represent an element of identification that is closely linked to how we feel about soccer as a sport and as a social phenomenon. It is something very beautiful that we must take care of and promote,” he values.
From Real Sporting they value the proximity of LaLiga. “He has been able to collect these concerns and challenges within an open and close communication process so that the training improves our daily lives,” Sánchez summarizes. A vision shared by Luis Arnau Pilar, director of Methodology at Villarreal CF: “Involving the clubs in this training and becoming participants in it helps us to be more competitive and not fall behind.”
At Villarreal CF, the youth team also plays a fundamental role. So much so that currently half of the players who are in the first team have gone through one of their youth football teams. The arrival of Pau Torres to the first team is an example. A player born in Villareal who started when he was five years old in the Villarreal CF Querubines, going through all the categories until reaching the first team and the Spanish National Team.
“Without the quarry, Spanish football cannot be understood. That's where the teams are nourished,” Luis Arnau summarizes. “We are clear that betting on the youth team must be accompanied by a professionalization of the people who work with these players (coaches, coordinators, technical secretariat, etc.),” he highlights. “With LaLiga Training Hub, teams will be more competitive and more talent will emerge from our grassroots football,” concludes Arnau.
Along with the training designed for those people who work with, by and for the quarry provided by LaLiga Training Hub, LaLiga has also articulated the Academy Management and Control Software, a digital support platform for the quarry structure available to all LaLiga clubs and which is already being used in all their international academies.
The methodology is structured based on 100 training concepts that adapt to each phase of the athlete's evolutionary development and that, at the same time, are key to their adult life. All this makes it a unique tool in the football ecosystem.
Carlos Casal, coordinator of LaLiga Sports Projects, knows it well: “The process evolves towards a platform that seeks to quantify the player's stimulation in four areas: technical-coordinative, tactical-cognitive, physical-conditional and psycho-socio-affective,” he describes. “We want to establish an orderly process so that the player is stimulated and grows based on his skills and maturation level,” he adds.
"It is a tool that acts as a cornerstone to coordinate more than 50 technicians around the world, adapting to the needs that the project and the context requires, but having as a link our methodological principles, from which "The software has been developed," adds David García Gómez, coordinator of Technicians and Methodology at LaLiga. It has already been implemented in eight countries, following the evolution of more than 8,000 young people around the world.
It is, therefore, a comprehensive support instrument that seeks to adjust and offer each player what they need in their development according to their context and maturational stage. A structured teaching process that also allows optimizing and regulating the control of technicians, adapting training to the international context and the socio-cultural particularities of each territory. An essential LaLiga tool so that all clubs have the necessary resources to firmly support the development of Spanish grassroots football.
