Barça Residency Academy, founder member of MLS Elite Player Development
After three years of life, the Barça Residency Academy US (Casa Grande, Arizona) is viewed as one of the best soccer schools in the United States of America. Its latest achievement has been its acceptance as a founder member of MLS Elite Player Development, the new top division for North American youth soccer.
This new yearly competition brings together the 65 best clubs in the US and Canada, totalling 8,000 youth players, and also provides a platform for the development of elite level players as well as improving the level of coaching.
This comes as a massive boost for the Barça Academy programmes in the United States, where there are currently 11 centres in operation (Barça Residency Academy US, the two Barça Academy PRO in Miami and New York and the Barça Academies in Austin, Charlotte, Chicago, Columbus, Nashville, Northern Virginia, Orlando and San Diego), where the idea is to keep expanding and for more of these academies to get into the top division.
Since it opened in 2017-18, the Barça Residency Academy US has managed to get 100% of its graduates to either get college grants or to sign contracts with pro clubs, the most prominent examples including Julián Araújo (Los Angeles Galaxy) and Matthew Hope (Shalke 04). Its best achievement to date was its U17 team’s third place in the Development Academy two seasons ago, where it was the only team that is not associated to an MLS club that made it into the quarter finals.