Barcelona has made an agreement with an African beverage company to help develop young talented African footballers. The club's youth academy (La Masia) coaches will visit some Southern African countries such as Zambia, South Africa, Namibia, Botswana and Tanzania. They will go there to impact their coaching technics to the African coaches.
The famous club believes that there are abundance of talents in Africa and want to help to develop them into world class players. The financial vice president of the club, Mr Javier Faus, told BBC, that what they planned to do is more than signing a sponsorship deal.
"This goes beyond just signing a sponsorship contract. We know there is a lot of talents in Africa, but we are happy to provide the expertise of our coaches to help the game develop in these countries."
The club it seems is concentrating their efforts in the Southern Africa, because according to Mr Faus, most of the African talents in the last 20 years has been mainly from West Africa.
He also think that in the next two decades Africa will become even more important than it is now in producing quality footballers. And he also believes that in that time there will be an African World Cup champion.
"In the last 20 years most of the talents came from West Africa, but I think in the next two decades the continent will become even more important in producing players. I"m sure that in that time we will see an African team winning the World Cup."
Apart from the La Masia coaches coming to teach the African coaches their technics, their African counter-parts will be going to Barcelona to see for themselves how the famous club has been producing world class players, such as Lionel Messi, Xavi Hernandez and Andreas Iniesta.
Barcelona, had African stars who achieved success with them most famous of them was Samuel Etoo who won many titles with them including two champion league trophies. The other two that won trophies with the club are Yaya Toure now with Manchester City and Seydou Keita. They both also won champion leagues with the club.
But non of these players grew up with Barcelona academy, they all joined the clubs already stars in their own rights. Even the former Arsenal player now in the team, Alex Song of Cameroon, did not grow up with La Masia.
The Young African players in the academey mainly came from the Samuel Etoo's foundation. Barcelona sees Africa as the final frontier, where a lot of talents are to be harvested. But for them it is a long time project.
"We have a lot of fans across the world but Africa is the final frontier. We want to spend time and effort to introduce ourselves to the continent. Our willingness is to tap into that market over the next decade because we know that is something that doesn't happen overnight," Mr Faus said.
It is a good thing, that one of the biggest clubs in the world, wants to be involved in developing young African talents. They will bring in their expertise and technical know how, to advance the African football. It is a deal, that is going to benefit both, Barcelona and the Africans, that are involved in the project.
