The celebration and tournament took place on Friday at Liberty Park in Powell, Ohio
The Barca Academy Columbus officially kicked off its first season with an inauguration ceremony at the school in Liberty Park in Powell, Ohio. It is the project’s seventh location in the United States after openings in Austin, Charlotte, Chicago, Northern Virginia, and San Diego. There is also the Barca Academy Pro NY, the fourteenth location in North America, which demonstrates the importance of FC Barcelona’s youth soccer development schools worldwide.
The inauguration was attended by the global Director of the Barca Academy project, Carles Martín, and the Director of International Projects for Barca Academy in America and the Middle East, Frederic Martín. They enjoyed meeting the students and their families and participated in the traditional ribbon cutting ceremony for the Club’s new soccer school. The event also served to introduce the Local Project Director for the Barca Academy Columbus, Miquel Gasparin, to the students and parents.
The event commenced with a group photo, then the first official internal tournament named the Barca Academy Columbus Cup took place. It allowed hundreds of players from the new school, the fifth run by FC Barcelona partner ISL in the United States, to show their sporting development since having been exposed to the FC Barcelona methodology for the first time.
Forty-Five Barca Academy projects across five continents
The Barca Academy is FC Barcelona’s model for youth soccer development worldwide and its main objective is the multi-faceted education of its students. This model of a soccer school, exported internationally, aims to grow the Barca brand and transmit the work ethic and values of the Club around the world.
The schools work with their own unique model based on the Barca methodology from the youth teams up to the first team, with an attacking and creative playing style and the transmission of crucial values such as respect, humility, effort, ambition and teamwork with considerable success.
Currently, FC Barcelona has 45 Barca Academy projects around the world, 180 campuses and 50 clinics, with a presence in 52 countries and across five continents, and the participation of 45,000 children across all the activities.
The Barca Academy projects are divided into the Barca Escola of Barcelona, the Barca Academy Pro in Haikou (China) and New York, the Barca Residency Academy of Casa Grande (Arizona) and the 41 Barca Academies spread across the five continents.
