Classy Casadó the real gem as Barça's academy stars humble Real Madrid

If the football part of your brain is still wondering “how do Barcelona do it?,” then perhaps you’re thinking about their astonishing 4-0 win against Real Madrid at the Santiago Bernabéu on Saturday (stream a replay on ESPN+, U.S. only) — the second time the Catalans have logged this result at Los Blancos‘ HQ in three seasons.

Equally, it might be because you’re still stunned at watching Barça’s incessant production line of home-bred, diminutive, skinny, impossibly youthful footballers — the latest of whom, Marc Casadó, played out of his skin against the Spanish and European champions on Saturday — produce golden nugget after golden nugget.

It feels like only the blink of an eye ago that this club was introducing us to pocket-sized dynamos, or in one case genius, in the shape of Andrès Iniesta, Xavi Hernandez, Lionel Messi and Jordi Alba. The updated process, thanks to Gavi, Pedri, Alex Balde, Dani Olmo, Pau Cubarsí, Fermín López, Lamine Yamal, and now Casadó, shows the mould is not broken

Three things unite the “old” crew and the modern gang: firstly, they are all either physically puny or undersized by modern standards, or both. Secondly, with the exception of Pedri, each of them has had his footballing circuitry installed at Barcelona’s world-famous La Masía youth academy. Thirdly they all play, or at least try to play, “the Barça way.”

Casadó is the one in the spotlight right now. Against Madrid he was part of a six-player clutch in blaugrana who were all 22 or younger — the only time that’s happened in 108 years of this match.

What probably most hit your eye about him — aside from the fact that like Pedri, Gavi, Balde, Lamine, Cubarsí and Fermín he’ll still be asked for ID and proof of age every time he goes into a bar for five or six years to come because he looks so youthful — is how he “broke” the Clásico.

Madrid took the first half, on points, and even though Barcelona were quicker, more intense and more threatening immediately after the second half started, it wasn’t until Casadó did something outrageously skillful that Barça scored. Neither Vinícius Júnior nor Kylian Mbappé bothered to press Barcelona’s recently turned 21-year-old “pivote” and so, enjoying his splendid isolation, Casadó sent an absolutely divine, defence-splitting pass straight down the middle to Robert Lewandowski who controlled, scored and turned the game.

Yes, you’re right, that’s the second time in four days that this Casadó kid has produced that type of magic. Well done.

On Wednesday against Bayern Munich in the Champions League, when he and his teammates authored another thrashing of a hugely favoured, much more experienced, physically imposing team, Casadó chose the moments before half-time to launch a quarterback pass 45 metres from right to left into the path of Raphinha. The Brazil international scored the best goal of his career to leave Barcelona 3-1 ahead, en route to a 4-1 victory.

I think it’s worth emphasising that Wednesday was only Casadó’s third Champions League start, and the Clásico only his seventh in La Liga.

During his Barca “B” career he only managed two goal assists. During his short time with the first team, in what is indeed his big breakthrough season, Casadó’s already produced four assists, two of which came in these pair of gargantuan tests for coach Hansi Flick’s side.

I imagine what’s most exciting the professional football world, though, is the work that Casadó does over and above his thrilling ability to thread a football through the eye of a needle. The 21-year-old Catalan is industry personified.

He’s the player for Barcelona who covered most kilometres in the Champions League this season and, above that, he was the guy who ensured that Real Madrid rarely had the time, space or composure to pass carefully or successfully into the huge space left by Barcelona’s high defensive line.

It’s totally justified that Barcelona are being lauded for their remarkable ability to catch teams offside — now approaching 100 times across LaLiga and the Champions League already this season. That’s the product of intense training, huge concentration, communication between the defenders … and steely self-confidence.

The complementary part of this art, though, is that the midfielders must not give the ball away cheaply and must harass and press the opposition’s distributors, while also completing all the other tasks which were once the territory of a genius like Sergio Busquets.

I know that Casadó’s skill-set is catching attention among the greats of the sport because after his first game of the season a friend of mine, who I won’t embarrass but who won the title in England and won three international trophies for his country, and who remains highly regarded, texted me to say: “What a player Casadó! With a little bit of patience he can become a great Barcelona player!” That argument is gathering strength.

What I meant about all of those above-named footballers being able to play “the Barça way” was that whatever the formation, whatever the pressures of a particular match, whatever the changing preferences of a coach in how he wants them to perform, core elements of when to show for the ball, how to position yourself, how to press and how to pass are all present. It’s been trained into them by thousands and thousands of repetitive hours on La Masía’s training grounds.

“Playing with these emerging guys is pretty easy,” Pedri said of Casadó. “Apart from their absolute hunger to press, to tackle, to run and to win, they’ve been in the Barça academy and so they know the way we play around here. Marc is like an earthquake for the opposition. He never, ever thinks that any ball is a lost cause.”

Effectively, even taking into account Barcelona’s remarkable efficacy in finishing chances on Saturday, that press/pass ability was the key to the victory. When Flick demanded more control of the game, his players provided it. Because they passed Madrid “to death,” as Sir Alex Ferguson once famously put it.

When the game required visionary, high-risk passing ability which could expose Real Madrid’s positional frailty, Casadó, and his teammates, provided that too.

Post match, Casadó added to his on-pitch charms by shyly admitting that his No. 1 fan is his sister, so she’ll be receiving his first-ever Clásico Barça shirt — no matter the sentimental value it holds for him.

He also said that Flick needed “huge balls” to play such an advanced defensive line against a team like Madrid. And he’s right.

With exceptional, lightning-fast footballers like Vinícius and Mbappé, Madrid should have been capable of springing Barcelona’s offside trap on a regular basis, rather than being left with egg on their face, and the linesmen’s flags high in the night sky, on an even more regular basis. Mbappé was even left with an unwanted career offside record.

That they couldn’t was firmly down to the standards that Casadó set in harassing, annoying, robbing and pressurising Madrid’s midfield.

Why, you might ask, did Carlo Ancelotti wait so long before introducing Luka Modric from the bench? He had the ideal man to bring calm to the chaos, to add laser vision to his team’s otherwise-sloppy distribution, but he waited until Barcelona were completely in the ascendancy to introduce the Croatia international. That was a sizeable error.

All the same, a couple of closing thoughts.

Firstly, and there is no revisionism involved here, there will be too few people remembering that it was former boss Xavi who gave Barça first-team debuts to Yamal, Balde, Cubarsí, Fermín and Casadó. Flick is getting an even better tune out of them, but it was Xavi who put the band together.

Some decent credit, too, to the now departed Barça “B” coach Rafa Marquez. Casadó says that it was the Mexican who taught him well, who instilled confidence, and advanced his case to play for Barcelona’s first team. Marquez, for his part, says: “I’d play with 11 Casadós in my team if I could!”

And, finally, even though this is the right moment to praise the Barça academy, its philosophy, the current crop and how Flick is bringing all the elements together in beautiful harmony, let nobody forget that this is early in the season.

Madrid were on a run of 42 games unbeaten, and while their youth academy hasn’t produced a meaningful first-team player since the emergence of Dani Carvajal and Lucas Vázquez, they have regularly dominated Europe, are the reigning champions of Spain and the continent. Madrid should under no circumstances be written off solely because this was one of those Clásicos where they were left embarrassed and thoroughly beaten.