FCB Juvenil A · History

The first trophy on record for FC Barcelona’s Juvenil A is the 1951 Copa del Rey Juvenil, Spain’s under-19 cup. Since then the Catalan club’s under-19 side, the last step of the academy known as La Masia before the reserve team and the first team, has won 19 youth Copas del Rey, four Copas de Campeones and three UEFA Youth League titles, in 2014, 2018 and 2025. It plays its home matches at the Ciutat Esportiva Joan Gamper in Sant Joan Despí.

The first national titles

After that 1951 cup, Barcelona’s youth side won the competition again in 1959 and then took five editions in a row between 1973 and 1977. In the late seventies it also ruled the national under-19 league, winning it in 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982 and 1983, and again in 1985 and 1986. The Copa del Rey Juvenil came back to the club in 1980, 1986, 1987 and 1989. In 1993-94 the team completed a league and cup double. Over the same period it won three straight editions of the Blue Stars/FIFA Youth Cup, the international youth tournament held in Zurich, in 1993, 1994 and 1995.

The División de Honor years

With the creation of the División de Honor Juvenil, the under-19 league was split into regional groups, and Barcelona were placed in Group III. They won their group in 2000, 2001, 2005, 2006, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2013. The Copa del Rey Juvenil kept arriving in 1996, 2000, 2002, 2005, 2006 and 2011. The group winners meet at the end of each campaign in the Copa de Campeones, which the team won for the first time in 2005 and again in 2009 and 2011. The 2019-20 season was cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic: the Spanish federation declared each group leader champion, which gave Barcelona the 2020 title, and cancelled that year’s Copa del Rey and Copa de Campeones.

Winners of the first Youth League

UEFA launched the Youth League in 2013-14 as a European club competition for under-19 players. Barcelona won its first edition. On 14 April 2014, at the Colovray Stadium in Nyon, Switzerland, they beat Benfica 3-0 with one goal from Rodrigo Tarín and two from Munir El Haddadi. They became the first side to lift the Lennart Johansson Trophy, and Munir finished as the tournament’s top scorer with 11 goals. That same year the Juvenil A also won its División de Honor group.

A second Youth League in 2018

After winning their league group in 2017, García Pimienta’s team returned to Nyon four years after the first final. On 23 April 2018, again at Colovray, they beat Chelsea 3-0: Alejandro Marqués scored twice and Abel Ruiz added the third in stoppage time. It was the club’s second Youth League, in a season in which the Juvenil A also topped its División de Honor group.

From the 2022 Copa de Campeones to the 2025 treble

Following group titles in 2020 and 2021, Òscar López’s Juvenil A won its group again in 2022 and, on 4 June that year in Las Rozas, claimed its fourth Copa de Campeones, eleven years after the previous one. On the way they beat Valencia 2-0 in the quarter-finals and Celta 4-3 away in the semi-finals, then defeated Athletic Club 2-0 in the final, with goals from Álex Valle and, in stoppage time, Fermín López. In 2023 the team were group champions once more.

The 2024-25 season, with Juliano Belletti as coach, ended with three trophies. The team sealed its league group with a 3-0 win over Espanyol at the Ciudad Deportiva Dani Jarque and took the Copa del Rey Juvenil, the club’s nineteenth, by beating Real Zaragoza 5-0 in the final in Villanueva de la Serena. On 28 April 2025, in Nyon, they defeated Trabzonspor 4-1 in the UEFA Youth League final, with goals from Andrés Cuenca, captain Hugo Alba and Ibrahim Diarra, and became the first club with three titles in the competition.