The Team That Could Have Been: A Decade of Lost Prospects

I originally got this idea from a comment about a week back. I dont remember who it was, but thanks for the idea!

This is a list of the players who have left Real Madrid’s cantera in the past decade and have had a career in either the first or second division of Spain or abroad (a couple Alcorcon players too). Id say 50% of these names I was able to come up with off the top of my head, but the rest I had to track down based on Football Manager screenshots from the past few years and Wikipedia. Some of the players obviously have shown more potential in their careers then others, but I decided to list a great majority just to give you a sense of the kind of talent we ship out so frequently.

I did not include the dates each of the playes flew the coup, either on loan or on a permanent basis as it was more exhaustive then just finding the names. Excuses excuses I know, but I wanted to talk about a few other things beyond just when we let them go. I will say that from eyeballing the list, you can begin to draw corollaries as to when certain players left and connect those to specific events at the club this decade.

As of writing this, Real Madrid has five canteranos in their first team squad: Raul, Guti, Casillas, Arbeloa and Granero. Several other players from the Castilla team have trained with the first team this year, but none have made their debuts yet. Keep the number five in mind as you review these names. Bolded names are players I believe could have been successful as Real Madrid players.

Callejon brothers (Espanyol and Albacete)
Juanfran (Osasuna)
Mata (Valencia)
Luis Filipe (Deportivo)
Javi Garcia (Benfica)
Negredo (Sevilla)
Soldado (Getafe)
Adrian (Getafe)
Parejo (Getafe)
Torres (Getafe)
Codina (Getafe)
Kiko Casilla (Cadiz)
Borja (Valladolid)
Borja Valero (Real Mallorca)
Pavon (Zaragoza)
Mejia (Murcia)
Raul Bravo (Olympiakos)
Bueno (Valladolid)
Agus (Cordoba)
Portillo (Osasuna)
Aranda (Osasuna)
Javier Balboa (Benfica)
David Barral (Sporting Gijon)
Roberto Trashorras (Celta Vigo)
David Aganzo (Vallecano)
Esteban Cambiasso (Inter)
David Cobeno (Vallecano)
Ruben de la Red (Injured)
Miguel Angel Corona (Almeria)
Samuel Etoo (Inter)
Dani Guillen (unknown)
Jurado (Atletico Madrid)
Jordi Lopez (Swansea)
Diego Lopez (Villarreal)
Oscar Minambres (retired, injuries)
Mista (Deportivo)
Toni Moral (Racing Santander)
Cesar Navas (Rubin Kazan)
Nieto (Almeria)
Rodri (Elche)
Chupe (SD Noja)
Ruben Gonzalez (Real Mallorca)
Miguel Palencia (unknown)
Miguel Palanca (Castellon)
Javier Paredes (Zaragoza)
Albert Rivera (Sporting Gijon) Youngest ever player for Real Madrid
RIki (Deportivo)
Sergio Alejandro (Hercules)
Schorch (FC Cologne)
David Sousa (Albacete)
Tote (Hercules)
Manuel Tena (Vallecano)
Villafane (Boca Juniors)
Valdo (Malaga)
Fernando (Malaga)
Juan Forlin (Espanyol)
Thaer (unknown)
Jeffrey (unkown)
Ernesto Gomez Gomez (Alcorcon)
Borja (Alcorcon)
Rayco (Real Ovideo)
Gonzalo Garcia (FC Gronigen)
Luis Garcia (Espanyol)
Julio Alvarez Mosquera (Real Mallorca)
Dani Cifuentes (Cadiz)
Enrique Corrales (Real Mallorca)
Adrian Martin (Levante)
Alex Perez (Albacete)
Oscar Diaz (Real Mallorca)
Carlos Sanchez (Castellon)
Sergio Sanchez (Sevilla)
Rafeal Santacruz (AD Cueta)
Andres Del Campo (Elche)
Jose Zamora (Ponferradina)
Gorka (Real Madrid C)

I count 75 players who have or had careers in professional football at a reasonable level and have spent atleast one year in the Real Madrid cantera, a majority of them in the B or Castilla team. Some players have retired due to injury, or sickness in the case of De la Red, while other players current team is unknown (the final player, Gorka, still plays with Real but injuries have stunted his development to the point where he is in his 20s and plays with the C team. His career looks destined to progress no further unfortunately). There have been more the 75 players that have “graduated” from the Real Madrid academy of course, and many of them spent only a season there, but it counts none the less as they had a chance to play for Real Madrid from their time in the Castilla team.

I could have gone in to a more exhaustive analysis by looking at former Real Madrid C and Juvenil A-C team players, but I did not have a week or two free to look up all of that information. Id like to do that, but I do have a life! Maybe if they offered degrees in such things Id go for it. If I had done this, then players like Gerardo Bruna, Jesus Berrocal (the David Beckham of the Segunda) or David Moreno would have been included and the list could have been three or four times as long.

A few words on youth players before we get started. I want to remind you that all of this is hypothetical, as one would have no way of predicting if a player was ever going to be successful at a particular club. My determining factor of whether or not players would be successful is simply just the opinion I formed of the player having watched them play/read about their performance. There is no objective formula or test to put a player through, or a scale or measurement system to judge whether say Alejandro or Ruben were better youth prospects but why neither had any success with Real. Its not an exact science, so please take it with a grain of salt.

I will also say that while the list is long, lets keep perspective. 75 players is obviously not the entire output of the cantera through a decade. Id put the number closer to 200-300 players that have went on to play in a professional or amateur capacity that played in the Castilla team at some point in the decade. Like I said though, many of the players never made it to the Castilla team and moved somewhere else. Its incredibly difficult to track those kinds of movements as there is not established internet source that chronicles them. If you have a source for such things, please feel free to share it with me.

The other point I want to make on the perspective of this article is that 75 players is to many for a team to use. Certainly more then half of the players in the list were never going to be good enough to play for Real Madrid in their youth, although some of the players have developed into useful squad members, such as the case with a Tote at Hercules or Borja at Valladolid. Understanding that not all of the cantera products are good enough to play for the first team is usually difficult because your emotions get the better of you. I never thought Arbeloa was good enough for the first team way back in the 04-05 season, but he has proved otherwise with his performances for Deportivo and Liverpool. This lends credence to the loaning of players to further their development, in the case of half the Getafe squad and Negredo this season.

Of course the loaning is not a bad thing as long as the players acclimate well to their new team, and Real has done very well placing its cantera players in ideal situations with which to develop. Every summer there has been three or four cantera players who had done so well the past season they are considered ready to return to Real. This in itself proves the system is not flawed. Where the break down occurs in my opinion is in the move from the Castilla team straight in to the first team. The last player to make the vertical move was Miguel Torres under Fabio Capello, who despite his yawn producing pragmatism, was excellent in giving confidence to youth team players when making their debuts.

Pellegrini has yet to use a cantera player in a game, although Acuna has made the bench, Marcos Alonso has made a squad and several players have been training with the first team on occasion this year. The injury of Pepe presents a chance for a cantera player to step up in his absence, but it also indicates who will be on their way out at the end of the season to add to the list for the new decade. Its that guilt edged for cantera players, and unfortunately the club and its various coaches have never developed a good system to help young players step up to the next level and play with the first team.

Be it ignorance, cowardice or greed, there has always been a reason for failure associated with a canterano. Expensive purchases block the progress of canteranos, although the pressure on the coaches of Real Madrid has often meant they were less likely to take a risk on a Castilla player in a competitive match. The pressure on a canterano if he was to make his debut and have a made game is also immense, such as the story of Ruben, who had a terrible 20 minutes on his debut and was pulled, never to play for Real again. It must also be said that selling youth players is a profitable business for Real, such as the enormous fee that was received for Negredo and Javi Garcia this summer. Negredo was probably worth the money, but Javi Garcia’s fee was quite inflated.

And then there is the problem of the team being in the 2B, or third division of Spanish football. It is certainly not bad competition for 18-21 year olds to have, but there is the feeling within the club that the Castilla team needs to be in the Segunda in order to develop better talent. I say bullshit. Barca Atleti has been in the third tier for some time now, but there young players are getting alot of critical acclaim despite that. The third division provides the competition that allows for players to win more games then they loose, which was the problem with Castilla in the second division, or Sevilla Atletico last year. Villarreal B may find themselves in a similar soon.

And finally, the problem I see the most for the canteranos is the perception that they just are not good enough when compared to the multi-million dollar star the club can buy. Much of this is fueled by the sports media closely associated with Real Madrid, but the leadership of Real this past decade has done little to quell it, and as such, has set expectations to an unreasonable level for the performance of the team, and consequentially the performance of the youth team players who may be thrown in to the fray.

Complex issues of course, but I say that the coach is the one who begins to evoke a change in the philosophy. Its no secret that when Michel was the head of the academy he had little say within the club under Calderon, and when Perez came back to the club, the director of the academy now has even less influence. Pellegrini can change that though by promoting a player or two to replace Pepe for the remainder of the season. If he uses those players and the perform well, then we will have the Castilla players being depicted in a better light once again. If Pellegrini can continue this policy and use a new youth team player every so often, it will restore the hope that the canteranos have in making it to the first team one day, and it can change the attitudes of the management.

Its a lofty goal, and I am tired of standing on a soap box lecturing about how best to use the cantera. Its been a few years and nothing much has changed, so we will leave it at that. Without much ado, here are three complete squads using players from the academy who left Real Madrid this decade. They would be pretty competitive, and the first and third are 100% Spanish. I left Cambiasso and Etoo out as I didnt think they necessarily illustrated the point I was trying to prove.

———-Diego Lopez———-
Torres—Pavon—Mejia—Raul Bravo
Juanfran—Javi Garcia—Parejo–Mata
———Negredo—Bueno——–

—————-Carlos Sanchez————–
Sergio Sanchez—Schorch—-Forlin—-Luis Filipe
——Balboa—Borja—Rivera—Callejon——
————–Soldado—Portillo————

————–Casilla————–
Rodri—Agus—Cesar Navas—Alejandro
Jurado—-Adrian—Corona—-Nieto
———Aganzo—Barral———-

I left out players like Valdo, Riki, Aganzo, Codina and Paredes, all of which have had or are having first team football in the top flight, amongst others in the list. I also left out De la Red and Minambres as they are not medically cleared to play any longer.

Did I leave anyone out? Do you agree with the teams, or do you have your own set of lineups you would field? Let me know in the comments section!

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Category: Team News