Dro Fernandez and the Cautionary Tales of La Masia Prospects Who Left Too Soon | OneFootball

The story of Dro Fernandez and Barcelona has ended: a period that lasted far shorter than most supporters would have predicted when the midfielder with Filipino heritage burst onto the scene in July 2025.

Six months and five senior appearances later, the 18-year-old has decided to leave the club, citing a lack of play time as his reason for departure.

The notion itself of a player who turned 18 just this month, leaving a club for game time, is nonsensical. Looking at previous successful La Masia prospects, Sergio Busquets didn’t get his chance for the senior team until he was 20. Iniesta was forced to wait until the same age to become a first-team regular.

Even Lionel Messi – at Dro’s age – had only made nine senior Barcelona appearances. Development in football is a long process that takes years and years until a player finds his prime in his late-20s. There’s a reason Lamine Yamal’s case was so impressive, being a starter at 16. He’s the exception, not the rule.

That being said, PSG have seemed to emerge as heavy favourites to land the La Masia product this month, and will pay slightly more than his £6 million release clause to bring him over, a pittance for such a talent in today’s market.

Dro Fernandez will not be the first La Masia product to prematurely leave the club of their youth, and likely won’t be the last. Dro may soon find out leaving Barcelona isn’t a path to immediate success, like some around him may have convinced him.

Let’s look at some historical examples of players who, like Dro, left La Masia too soon – and would end up regretting it.

Marc Guiu

Marc Guiu was a young striker who joined La Masia in 2013 at the age of seven. The youngster would progress through the ranks quickly, and at 17, would finally get his chance in the first team squad following an injury to Robert Lewandowski.

Guiu would come on in the 80th minute in a home match against Bilbao. The Blaugrana needed a goal, and with no other options, Xavi had to resort to the 17-year-old. Just one minute after coming on, the decision would pay off, with Joao Felix sending a ball through a Guiu, making a run past the defensive line. The youngster would chip it over a scrambling Unai Simon and seal a 1-0 victory for Barcelona, marking a legendary debut, and surely a sign of things to come.

However, Guiu would have to compete with Robert Lewandowski, and once January arrived, Vitor Roque also became competition. While he’d only make six more appearances for the club, he still scored another against Royal Antwerp.

Guiu also seemed to still have a future at the club, with Lewandowski nearly 36 at the time and intended replacement Vitor Roque far from ready. All Guiu had to do was wait, and he’d eventually get a major role in the first team.

But waiting was the one thing he didn’t want to do.

Come the end of the season, Chelsea paid his lowly £6 million release clause, promised Guiu a large first-team role, and increased his salary tenfold, giving the youngster £50,000 per week.

Fast forward to today, and in 18 months, a now 20-year-old Guiu has only 1,300 minutes of senior football to his name, equivalent to just 15 full 90s, had a promising loan spell at Sunderland called off after three weeks and 110 minutes for the club after an injury to Liam Delap, and has been left wondering.

What if he stayed in Catalonia? Even Pau Victor, a striker not rated as highly as Guiu, played 29 matches for Barcelona last year.

Giovani Dos Santos

Giovani Dos Santos was one of La Masia’s most highly-touted prospects of the 2000s. Born just two years after Messi, Dos Santos was touted as another part of the golden era that included Messi, Xavi, Iniesta, and Busquets coming through in the space of a decade.

Breaking through the Catalan side in the summer of 2007, making the Club World Cup squad and going on to play 28 La Liga matches, five in the Champions League, and five in the Copa del Rey, Dos Santos would catch the eye of Europe.

He was a versatile player who could play on either wing or as a #10, and with Bojan Krkic also breaking out the same year, the future of Barcelona’s attack looked bright – Dos Santos on the left, Bojan in the middle, and Messi on the right.

However, history repeats itself once again. Due to feeling like he was lacking game time, Dos Santos would leave Barcelona in the summer of 2008 at 19 for £6 million (again) to Spurs. The Mexican international would join a promising Spurs team alongside Luka Modric, Gareth Bale, and Dimitar Berbatov. That being said, any concerns he had over game time would only intensify, as in his first half season, he would only make 12 appearances and play 570 minutes before getting loaned out to Ipswich.

To make matters worse, Dos Santos was famous for partying late into the night after moving to England, frequently turning up late for training and hungover. Then-Spurs manager Jamie Redknapp said about the Mexican, “If he could pass a nightclub as well as he can pass a ball, he would be all right”.

This would be the start of a journeyman career for Dos Santos, going on to represent eight clubs in 13 years after leaving Catalonia, leaving Europe for MLS club LA Galaxy at just 26, and making his last senior appearance in club football for Club America at just 31.

Dos Santos would still become a legend with Mexico, making 107 appearances for the national team, and helping lead the team to Round of 16 appearances in 2010 and 2014. However, this is still a fraction of what may have been had he chosen to tough it out at Barcelona.

Ilaix Moriba

Perhaps more than any of the players we’ve mentioned so far, this was a waste of potential. Ilaix Moriba was an incredibly highly rated midfielder coming through La Masia, scoring a hat-trick at 15 against Real Madrid’s U19 side. He then became a B-Team regular at 17, and just weeks after his 18th birthday, Moriba would become a regular for Barcelona under Ronald Koeman.

In half a season, Moriba would make 18 appearances for the Blaugrana, scoring one goal to seal a 2-0 win against Osasuna. By the end of the season, Moriba would become a regular, something manager Ronald Koeman hoped would continue going into 2021/22. Moriba was put on a similar level to Pedri at the time, who had broken into the Barcelona team the same season after a move from Las Palmas, and was even younger than the team’s golden boy.

Going into the summer of 2021, Barcelona were looking to lock down the Guinean international and secure his future at the club. However, after demanding nearly £75,000 per week of a money-starved Blaugrana, the club decided to sell him while they still could. After nearly completing a move to Spurs, Moriba would end up joining RB Leipzig late into the window. Moriba would end up on Leipzig’s books all the way until 2025, going out on three loans back to La Liga, and making just six Leipzig appearances for a total of 100 minutes.

After disappointing loans at Valencia and Getafe, Moriba has found a home in Celta Vigo’s midfield, but still at just 23, he is a compelling what-if story for who used to be Barcelona’s golden child coming out of La Masia.

Adama Traore

While he wasn’t hyped to the levels of Dos Santos and Moriba before him, Adama Traore was still a very promising winger coming out of La Masia and represents the typical story of La Masia prospects in the early-mid 2010s. After joining the club at eight years of age, joined the B-Team at 17, and got just two short stints for Barcelona’s first team in 2013 under Tata Martino and games in the Copa del Rey in the 2014/15 season with Luis Enrique before leaving.

Seeking a larger role, the Spaniard departed the Blaugrana in 2015 for Aston Villa, for £7 million, and embarked on the start of a decent Premier League career. While Adama would perform well for Wolves, he ended up as an average Premier League winger.

He’d spend time with Middlesbrough and Fulham, and even came back to Catalonia on a 6-month loan in 2022, an unremarkable spell. If Adama had stayed at Barcelona, perhaps he would’ve ended up a key piece of their post-Bartomeu rebuild and left a lasting legacy at the Blaugrana.

Jordi Mboula

Our final example is likely the least familiar of them all. Catalan-born Jordi Mboula joined Barcelona’s academy at the age of 11 and was an incredibly promising talent. In February 2017, the youngster went viral for an amazing goal in the UEFA Youth League against Dortmund in which he picked up the ball on the halfway line, skipped by multiple defenders with outstanding skill, and slotted it in the bottom corner.

Just four months after that sorcery, Mboula was out, for just £3 million, to Monaco. It looked like a masterstroke from the Ligue 1 side, but Mboula would spend two years between the first team and the B-Team, and left the club just two years later to go to Belgium on loan.

This would spark a spell in which Mboula would play for ten clubs in just seven years. The now-26-year-old has found zero stability in his career so far, and just days ago moved to Henan FC in the Chinese Super League. This career trajectory provokes the question: Would he have had a better career had he stayed at Barcelona? Surely he would.

Those were just a few examples of cautionary tales for all La Masia prospects in what happens when you leave what may be the world’s best football academy too soon, in search of money or minutes. It’s a warning to all La Masia prospects – including Dro Fernandez, but also potential breakout stars in the future, such as Toni Fernandez, Ebrima Tunkara, and Ruslan Mba that the grass may not always be greener.