Youth academy displays its power in RC Celta’s first team

RC Celta’s powerhouse continues to be its youth academy. In the first team there are seven players trained in A Madroa who have accumulated around 8,000 minutes so far in LaLiga. Their regular presence in the line-ups make the sky-blue team one of the clubs with the highest percentage of minutes played by its academy players in the main European leagues.

Currently, 30% of the squad is made up of players who have been trained in the club’s youth categories. In addition, their number and importance are growing day by day. Hugo Mallo, Iago Apas, Sergio Álvarez, Rubén Blanco, Kevin Vázquez, David Costas and Brais Méndez, in addition to other players from the B team who have already had minutes with the first team (Diego Alende, Iván Villar, Emmanuel Apeh and Dennis Eckert), add up to more than 1,000 official matches with the sky-blue jersey. The rest of the players on the first team have 830 official matches among all of them.

Both the club and the Celta Foundation have had a firm commitment for years to the development of players at A Madroa. Their work and effort are rewarded by the outstanding presence of youth players in the first squad, the multiple listings of the young talents to the lower categories of the Spanish National Team or sporting successes such as the one achieved last week by RC Celta U13 B, which won the prestigious Dubai Intercontinental Cup U13 after beating teams such as Chelsea, Barcelona or Juventus.