Ángel Alarcón, 15th U19 player to debut for Barça B under Garcia Pimienta

On Sunday, 16-year-old Ángel Alarcón became the 15^th player from the youth team to make his Barça B debut in the Garcia Pimienta era, in a crucial 1-0 victory over Espanyol B at the Ciutat Esportiva Dani Jarque, where he had formerly been a player himself. The result leaves the team level on points with leaders Tarragona, and just one point away from confirming a place in the new Primera RFEF next season, as well as the chance to go even higher in the promotion playoffs to Division 2A.

From Castelldefels, the coastal town just down the road from Barcelona, Alarcón came on for Gustavo Maia after 71 minutes, and performed well in his first 20 minutes, including setting up what was very nearly a second goal for Zeballos.

He arrived from Espanyol in 2018 to join Sergi Milà’s league-winning U16 team, contributing 22 goals to the cause. Under the same manager he then played for the A team, but although Barça were top of the table, the competition was not completed due to Covid-19. But he had impressed enough to earn immediate promotion to the U19A team, where he’s scored seven goals this term.

Álarcón has thus followed in the footsteps of team-mates Balde, Ilias, José Marsà, Jaume Jardí and Gavi, who have also made their Barça B debuts in 2020/21.

Since Garcia Pimienta took over the reserves on 25 April 2018, there have been 15 debutants that have come from the U19 team, starting with Jandro, Konrad, Nils Mortimer, Arnau Tenas and Nico in 2018/19, followed by Ilaix Moriba, Peque, Mika and Antonio Jesús Cantón (now of Villarreal C) in 2019/20. Ansu Fati also played much of the preseason with Barça B, but never played a competitive match because he was promoted directly to the senior team.

Average of 19.8 years

Ilias Akhomach made his debut four games into the season at Andorra, Alejandro Balde did so a week later at L’Hospitalet, José Marsà followed soon after away to Llagostera, Jaume Jardí got his chance in Tarragona and Gavi debuted in the thrashing of l’Hospitalet.

Barça B are competing in Division 2B with an exceptionally young squad, whose average age is just 19.8 years – and yet they have still stormed their way into the top positions of a tough championship.