La Masia back in business and set to power Barcelona in clasico clash with Real Madrid

In the last competitive meeting between Barcelona and Real Madrid, the March clasico that served as the fixture’s temporary farewell to Camp Nou while the stadium undergoes its rebuild, Lamine Yamal was still only 15 years old. He was several weeks from becoming Barca’s youngest senior debutant.

Fermin Lopez was still in his teens. He spent that spring weekend on the losing side for Linares, where he was on loan from Barca’s B team, playing in the third tier of Spanish football.

Marc Guiu, 17, was still getting over the emphatic elimination of Barcelona’s under-19s in last season’s Uefa Youth League by Dutch club AZ Alkmaar, who have a fine academy cohort but not one with the fame, the cachet, or the distinguished list of past graduates of La Masia, the Barca youth system.

Seven months on, that trio of youngsters are far better known. They can each look forward to the first clasico of the 2023-24 season, Saturday’s visit of Real Madrid to Barca’s borrowed, short-term home at Montjuic, with genuine hope of participating. They have timed their sudden ascents into grown-up, top-flight football perfectly.

On Wednesday night, at home to Shakhtar Donetsk, Fermin, now 20, made his first Champions League start, taking home plenty of special mementos. From his position in advanced midfield for Barca, Fermin struck the frame of the Shakhtar goal enough times to have scored a hat-trick.

Happily, one of those efforts pinged back off the post to Ferran Torres, who opened the scoring. Another struck an upright on its way in for Barca’s second goal in the 2-1 victory. It was Fermin’s second goal for the club within a month.

A win over Madrid would mean the Catalan club leapfrogging their rivals, the league leaders, in the table. The