Barcelona are undoubtedly one of the greatest teams to have played football and under the stewardship of Pep Guardiola they continue to impress despite the surprising defeats to Chelsea and Real Madrid, effectively ending their season. At the heart of their dominance is the seemingly effortless transition their youngsters have made from reserves to first team. Andres Iniesta, Xavi Hernandez and of course Lionel Messi have all been products of the famed La Masia academy that also oversaw the initial development of Cesc Fabregas. The academy seems to have an endless conveyor belt of talents coming through into the first team and not look out of place as Isaac Cuenca displayed against Chelsea. Perhaps it’s one of the other graduates though that has attracted most attention from other clubs and he could be set for a summer switch.
Christian Tello broke into the first team this season having previously starred in the clubs B team and has already notched up 3 goals in the 3 games he has started. Tello has looked genuinely exciting operating mainly on the left flank but also able to switch sides at will. The 20-year-old has displayed trickery, intelligence and an eye for goals shown by his already promising goal record at the Camp Nou. So why has he made just the 15 appearances – mainly coming from the substitutes bench – surely he should be a regular?
A few reasons have meant the slowed progress in Tello’s promising career. Firstly Tello is still only 20-years-old and is relatively inexperienced compared to his golden team-mates and cannot expect to immediately take priority over his heralded elders. There is also the issue that unfortunately for Tello he has many players standing in his way in his specific position. Of late Guardiola has deployed Iniesta in a wide role to compensate Fabregas and at times Thiago Alcantara in the team.
Dani Alves has also at times found himself deployed further up the field as Guardiola has gone for three at the back. Perhaps more damaging for Tello has been the recent emergence of Isaac Cuneca – another product of La Masia – who has began to find a starting role at times ahead of Christian Tello. All of these factors have affected Tello’s rise to prominence and will do so for the foreseeable future.
So what can he do to make sure his talent isn’t a wasted one? There has been reported interest from Liverpool (according to CaughtOffside) Benfica and Valencia. All of these are massive clubs – perhaps not as successful as Barcelona but still well respected – and would represent Tello with an option that isn’t necessarily backwards. There could well be movement in the summer and it will be intriguing to see where Tello is lining up next year, his signature would be a major coup.
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