Joe Cole claims Barcelona made a mistake letting 18-year-old forward join Chelsea | OneFootball

Although it has always been one of the best youth academies in Europe, La Masia has been particularly productive in terms of talent development for the last few years. Only in the last two years, there have been several players who have made the jump from the academy to the Barcelona first team.

In the last year, several youngsters made their places in the starting eleven of the Blaugrana team. Lamine Yamal was the most notable of these, while Pau Cubarsi and Marc Casado have also emerged as clear starters for Hansi Flick.

Meanwhile, there have also been some other players who have not been able to get a regular spot in the first team but still impressed whenever they were given the chance. One such player last season was Marc Guiu, who left the Blaugrana club last summer and is now playing in the Premier League with Chelsea.

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Although he is not getting a lot of chances in the Premier League, he is still a regular starter for Enzo Maresca in the UEFA Conference League. In that competition, the Spaniard has already scored 6 goals in 6 games up to now.

Three of the goals came only in the last game against Shamrock United, as the youngster scored a hat-trick to give his side a 5-1 victory. He scored his side’s first, second, and fourth goals, although the former two came from opposition mistakes, and the third was an unstoppable header from him.

As SPORT has reported, following this performance, the former Chelsea player Joe Cole asked why Barcelona had actually allowed such a promising player to leave in the first place. Praising the La Masia graduate, Cole said:

“This boy, in two years, could be a starting number nine. I think Barcelona has made a mistake. My thoughts on Guiu are: how could Barcelona let him go? I compared him to Suárez and received a lot of criticism for it.”

There is no doubt that, with the form he is showing at Chelsea, Guiu has the potential to become a highly successful striker for the English club. Barcelona might already be regretting their decision to let him go, especially since they made little effort to convince him to stay when Chelsea triggered his €6 million release clause last summer. However, only time will tell how his development unfolds in the future.