Athletic Club is the Laliga team that grants the most minutes to its youth players, since this year it employed 14 players trained in Lezama who shared 50.9% of the team's total minutes. Behind, are Celta de Vigo, with 13 players (49%), and Real Sociedad, with 16 (48.5%).
Osasuna (34.3%), Barcelona (26.9%), Villarreal (28.1%) and Valencia (27.5%) They complete the list of Spanish teams among the ten that have used the most homegrown players this season. While Huesca is the only LaLiga team that did not have a player trained in its subsidiary this season.
A report from the CIES Football Observatory reveals that Laliga is, among the five 'big' in Europe, the one with the highest percentage of minutes played by players trained in the quarries of the participating teams in the 2020-2021 season.
The Spanish league bets on “home football”. The economic crisis caused by the pandemic forced the big clubs to put aside the big disbursements to feed themselves, more than ever, on their affiliates.
This season some pearls from the quarries of Spanish clubs have made the leap to the elite, perhaps sooner than they expected. Some names like Yeremi Pino, Óscar Mingueza or Jon Moncayola have burst into first-level football and have played a crucial role for their teams.
The CIES research center takes as a scale all those players trained in a club for at least three seasons between the ages of 15 and 25.
Furthermore, if the values of the 27 leagues that are part of UEFA are taken into account, the team that employed the most footballers from its affiliate was MSK Zilina (61.5%) from Slovakia, followed by Dynamo Kiev (60 , 2%) and the Czech Sigma Olomuc (52%), which closes the podium. In this extensive list, Athletic Club is fifth.