Galactico v La Masia boy - what Jude Bellingham and Lamine Yamal tell us about Spain’s Liga problem
There is still no official agreement, given the current state of their financial forecast for the next year, that Barcelona will be permitted by La Liga authorities to sign new players this summer. That would make it a second year in which one of the world’s most powerful clubs have been inactive.
The huge debts upon the club, totalling around €3 billion (£2.5 billion) and including borrowing for the Camp Nou redevelopment, have been accrued chiefly through some very expensive signings and a huge wage bill. Yet Lamine Yamal, the Barcelona academy boy who turns 17 on Saturday, has shown at this European Championship that for all the huge challenges that face the club, it still has at least one great gift. The academy, named after the original La Masia site, continues to produce some of the best players in Europe.
At Real Madrid, they have a shrewd scouting operation, if a less prodigious academy - and they wield their reputation effectively in the market. Their great prize from last summer, Jude Bellingham, is one of the emergent talents in England’s team - if no longer its youngest - who faces Yamal’s Spain in Berlin in the final. For La Liga, divided by the dispute with its two biggest clubs, and far behind the Premier League in terms of television revenue income, Bellingham and Yamal are now two of its greatest assets.