Barça Academy project announces its 50th football school in the world

The Barça Academy, FC Barcelona’s series of international sports schools, now has 50 permanent projects around the world. The latest soccer academy will be located in the US city of Orlando, Florida, where training will begin from next August. It is the 25th such school in the Americas and the ninth in the United States.

This is a further example of the Barça Academy and the club’s penetration of an important strategic territory for the project. FC Barcelona has been promoting soccer in the US for more than five years, with the Barça Academy Orlando, run in partnership with ISL, following on the other Barça Academies already operating in Austin, Charlotte, Chicago, Columbus, Northern Virginia and San Diego, as well as the Barça Residency Academy in Arizona and the Barça Academy PRO in New York.

The facility will be located in the Austin Tindall Sports Complex in the south of the city, which boasts nine pitches, and where the first season is scheduled to involve around 200 players. The first days of trials for both boys and girls from 5 to 18 years will be held on Saturday June 8 on the same site.

A press conference to announce Barça Academy Orlando was held this morning at the Orlando Magic Stadium, in an event that was attended by the director of the Barça Academy project, Carles Martín and the FC Barcelona Managing Director Americas, Xavier O’Callaghan.  

Fifty permanent Barça Academy projects in all five continents

Barça Academy are FC Barcelona's own football schools for boys and girls, and which focus on the comprehensive education of its pupils. The model has been exported internationally, the idea being to expand the Barça brand and teach the rest of the world about the club’s philosophy and values.

The schools work with their own, unique system based on the same methodology that Barça uses from its youngest academy teams through to the senior team, encouraging a creative and attack-minded style of play indispensably combined with the teaching of values: respect, humility, effort, ambition and teamwork, with proven success.

FC Barcelona currently has a total of 50 Barça Academy projects around the world, plus more than 180 campuses and 50 clinics, in 56 countries on all five continents, involving more than 45,000 children in the different activities that they run.

The Barça Academy projects are divided into Barça Escola Barcelona, the Barça Academy Pro in Haikou (China) and New York (USA), Barça Residency Academy Arizona (USA) and the 46 Barça Academy in all five continents.