Xavi uncovers a new Barcelona defensive gem from Pau Cubarsi’s generation

Date:

Barcelona's Spanish coach Xavi attends a training session at the Joan Gamper training ground in Sant Joan Despi, near Barcelona, on January 30, 2024.
Photo by PAU BARRENA/AFP via Getty Images

New names tend to not wait too long before emerging from within the subsidiary of Barcelona. La Blaugrana are fortunate enough to have one of football’s most successful youth programs, and it continues to pay dividends. Even now, despite their financial woes, Barcelona is helped a lot by their young prospects.

Pau Cubarsi, one of the team’s primary central defenders, is among their most coveted prizes. However, despite being hailed as one of the most exceptional defenders to emerge from the Barcelona quarry, he is expected to be far from being the last of his kind.

As highlighted by SPORT, a new defender has already emerged and he comes from the same generation that Cubarsi comes from. Born in January of 2007, Leo Saca is the latest name to grace the ever-evolving spectrum of emerging talents from within FC Barcelona.

A left-footed central defender, he was only the newest name to find himself in a first-team training session under Xavi’s orders at FC Barcelona. His time under the guidance of the Juvenil B side of Pol Planes has not gone unnoticed by his seniors, with both the first team and Barcelona Atletic aware of his progress.

Constantly adapting and improving as a player, he is noted in the report to have grown a lot as a defender in terms of his consistency. On the other hand, his ball-playing has always been an exceptional quality of his due to his positional origin.

Arriving in FC Barcelona back in 2020, he first came as a natural pivot. Over time, however, his position has been changed into that of a central defender. Using his qualities as a former pivot, he has excelled at combining his new defensive abilities with the ball-playing qualities of his former role as a footballer.

Moreover, he is regarded as being quite the goalscorer as well. With four goals to his name already in his division, he has also proven himself to be a dependable penalty-taker. Hoping to excel with Barcelona himself, the young defender does showcase that he has all the holistic talents he needs to reach the very top.

Raafay Humayun
Raafay Humayun
Raafay Humayun is a life-long fan of FC Barcelona and an avid enjoyer of all things Blaugrana. Having fallen in love with the club for the way they defined football for him, he now spends his time watching games, analyzing the happenings in them, and digesting any and everything related to his beloved Catalan club. He also writes as an author for Barca News Network hoping to deliver the latest updates to his fellow ‘culés’.

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