Barça Academy World Cup presented by Rakuten 2019 is bigger ever involving more than 2,100 players

The Barça Academy World Cup, presented by Rakuten, is holding its eighth edition this April, and has once again broken its own records for participants, with more than 2,100 boys and girls aged 6 to 14 years from all five continents heading for the FC Barcelona facilities for an event taking place from April 15 to 18. Like last year, there will be three different venues: the Ciutat Esportiva Joan Gamper, the Miniestadi and its annexed fields and CEM Arístides Maillol.

A total of 188 teams are coming, 10% more than the 172 that attended last year. The 23 different countries have also set a new record, one more than the 22 that played in 2018. We are welcoming three new countries this year: Mexico (Barça Academy Puebla), Zambia (Barça Academy Lusaka) and Costa Rica. The event involves a total of 650 games across four days of competition, with teams from 51 Barça Academies and Barça Academy Camps from all around the world.

The opening ceremony will involve almost 8,000 people from among the athletes and their families at the Miniestadi on the morning of Monday 15 April. Once that is over, the balls with start rolling as teams compete at four different age levels: U8, U10, U12 and U14. The finals will all be played on Thursday 18 April from 11.30, to be followed by the trophy presentation.

As ever, the whole tournament can be followed on its official App, available for Android or IOS, and many of the games will also be broadcast on BarçaTV together with ample coverage on the Barça Academy social media, which will also be streaming matches to the world:

Facebook:www.facebook.com/barcaacademy
Twitter:www.twitter.com/barcaacademy 
Instagram:www.instagram.com/barcaacademy 

Forty-nine Barça Academy projects in the five continents

The Barça Academy is FC Barcelona’s own football school, whose main purpose is the comprehensive training of its pupils. This type of soccer school is being exported internationally, while also looking to promote the Barça name and teach the rest of the world about the club’s way of working and values.

These schools work in accordance with a unique system based on the same methodology employed at Barça from its youngest youth teams through to the first team, with creative, attack-minded play and a heavy focus on the club’s famous values of humility, effort, ambition, respect and teamwork, with tried and tested results.

FC Barcelona currently has a total of 49 Barça Academy projects around the world, plus more than 180 Camps and 50 Clinics, with a presence in 53 countries on all five continents and featuring more than 45,000 children partaking in the different activities being run.

These Barça Academy projects are distributed between the Barça Escola in Barcelona, the Barça Academy Pro in Haikou (China) and another in New York (United States), the Barça Residency Academy Arizona (United States) and the 45 Barça Academies distributed across the five continents.