Flick Sends Barcelona Academy Trio Back to Barça Atlètic

For four weeks they had shared a training pitch with Lamine Yamal, Pedri and Raphinha, worked under Hansi Flick and even pulled on the senior shirt in England. On Friday, Óscar Gistau, Ibrahim Diarra and Álex González swapped St George’s Park for the mountain air of La Vall d’en Bas, reporting for duty with Juliano Belletti’s Barça Atlètic. Flick’s first pre-season cuts are not a snub — they are a rite of passage every Barcelona academy hopeful knows well.

The trio are the first names trimmed from a swollen pre-season squad that had carried 17 youngsters from Barça Atlètic and the Under-19s. Their month inside the first-team bubble is exactly what the Barcelona academy is built to deliver: real exposure to elite training before a return to the development pathway. Far from a demotion, it is the club’s famed production line working as designed.

A month in the first-team bubble

All three travelled with the senior group to St George’s Park for Barcelona’s English camp and made their unofficial first-team bows against Birmingham City, a friendly that finished 2-2 before Barça won on penalties. Gistau, fresh from signing a new contract until 2028, played 28 minutes and tucked away one of the shootout kicks, while Diarra and González featured for 45 minutes apiece. Reports in Spain, including Mundo Deportivo, noted that González in particular caught the coaching staff’s eye, and all three trained on Friday at the Royalverd Training Center. Now they are back with Belletti, who could hand them minutes on Saturday against Girona B — the reserves’ final warm-up before the season begins.

For Gistau, the timing is especially sweet. The striker only recently committed his future to the club until 2028, and a month leading the line in senior sessions — capped by that composed shootout penalty in England — is the clearest sign yet that Flick’s staff rate his ceiling. Diarra and González, meanwhile, leave with 45-minute run-outs against senior opposition on their CVs, invaluable mileage for players still learning the demands of first-team football.

Barcelona academy pipeline still humming

The exits do not slow the conveyor belt. Flick will keep working with 14 academy players, a group set to travel this weekend to Udine for a pre-season triangular alongside Udinese and Nottingham Forest — the same mini-tournament previewed in our Barcelona friendly preview. That contingent still features eye-catching names such as Shane Kluivert, Tommy Marques, Xavi Espart and Toni Fernández, a reminder of the depth Barça continue to churn out. For Belletti, entering his second season in charge, the returning trio are welcome reinforcements as Barça Atlètic chase promotion back to Primera RFEF. With senior figures such as Raphinha and captain Ronald Araújo only now building match fitness, the youngsters’ readiness to fill in has not gone unnoticed.

So while Gistau, Diarra and González will open the campaign in the reserves rather than under the Spotify Camp Nou lights, none should feel hard done by. A month with Flick, a first taste of senior football and a clear message that the door remains open: that is the La Masia dream in motion. For a club that has always trusted its own, the Barcelona academy is still as vital to the first team as any summer signing.