Barcelona have set the standard for Spanish Women’s football over the past decade, winning the last four Liga F titles and claiming six of the previous ten. In addition to this recent dominance at the national level, they have achieved similar levels of success in Europe, reaching four of the past five UEFA Women’s Champions League finals and emerging victorious from two of them.
The Barcelona first team is loaded with star-studded names such as current Ballon d’Or holder Aitana Bonmatí, along with nine other players who started the 2023 Women’s World Cup final between England and Spain.
The Barcelona II team currently play in the Primera Federacion division — the league below the first team. However, despite being largely an academy side, they sit third in the division, currently just three points off league leaders Deportivo de la Coruña.
Along with Bonmatí and Ona Batlle, Barcelona have produced plenty of elite players. In recent years, names such as Vicky López and Giulia Dragoni have made the jump up to the first team.
In this scout report, we will outline three players who we believe are too good for the B team and could be due more senior minutes in the coming months. We provide analysis on the key tactics and roles these players play on their side.
Adriana Ranera, central defender, 18 years old
The first player we are going to highlight is 18-year-old central defender Adriana Ranera. Ranera has typically played as the left centre-back in a Barcelona II back four, accumulating 1067 minutes over 12 appearances this campaign. However, what makes Ranera such a vital prospect to look out for is her ability in both ball progression and in defensive phases.
First of all, let’s look at Ranera’s importance in Barcelona II’s ability to progress attacks from deep, with Barcelona averaging 68.4% possession per game. As a result, you can imagine the critical role the Barcelona defenders are going to have in terms of time on the ball. Ranera averages 77.18 passes per 90, which leads the division, and her accuracy of 88.74% puts her in fifth place in the division, just going to show how efficient she is in possession.
However, Ranera is not only efficient in possession but also effective, averaging 12.4 progressive passes per 90, the fourth-highest in the league, while also completing the third most progressive runs per 90 with 3.63. Both these attributes combine to give her the highest rate of progression per 90 of any player in the division — 7.72.
As such, you can see the importance of Ranera in Barcelona’s in-possession success. This would enable her to seamlessly fit in with the first team with much the same requirements asked of their defenders as in the reserves team.
One thing to note, however, is that despite her playing on the left, she is naturally right-footed and, at times, can look awkward playing balls with her right foot, so her future in the Barcelona side may well lay at right centre-back instead. Still, she does at least provide that flexibility.
This is an example of the sort of quality that Ranera has in the build phase, with her receiving the ball several times in this possession. First, she receives the ball from her centre-back partner, Emilia Szymczak. She opens her body out by receiving the ball with her left foot before taking advantage of the narrow angle taken by the defender and driving on her outside before playing a ball into her deep pivot midfield teammate.
Then, she receives the ball back from her teammate and is able to play an aggressive right-footed ball into her winger, dropping deep. This ball enables the team to progress to the penalty box as the winger can turn and spray the ball out to the right flank.
However, Ranera is not only an essential member in the build-up phase but a vital member of the defence. Particularly with excellent speed and ability to cover space effectively, which make her such an asset as they look to play a high defensive line.
Regarding her defensive output, she averages 3.88 interceptions per 90, which is the second-highest rate in the team. Her effectiveness in this area is largely due to her defensive positioning and intentions to be aggressive. She wants to step out of the defence and look to win the ball back for her side.
Alongside her ability to intercept the ball in defensive duels, she has a success rate of 79.17% — the 17th-highest in the division — particularly impressive given the majority of her duels are in isolated situations where the attackers have more potential spaces to attack.
In this situation against Atletico Madrid II, the Atleti player Szymczak and managed to get in behind the Barcelona II defence. What you notice is the speed that Ranera has to cover all that ground against a defender who has a headstart on her. Then, what is equally impressive is how, in the end, Ranera is able to slow herself down in order to prevent her opponent from cutting back on the inside and winning the ball back for her side, preventing a dangerous attack from developing.
Judit Pujols, left-back, 18 years old
The next player we are going to highlight is Judit Pujols. Pujols has already been called up to the first team, where she came off the bench in a Champions League clash against Rosenborg in December.
However, Pujols has predominantly played in the Barcelona II team this season, amassing 1212 minutes across fourteen games so far. Playing the majority of minutes at left-back, she has demonstrated some versatility and ability to play as a right-back, as a left winger, or even as a central defender if required.
Pujol is an important member of the defensive phase due to her ability to defend out wide in one-on-one situations. Her off-the-mark sharpness and understanding of when to stand off and when to engage her opponent make her effective in defensive duels. As such, she has been completing at an impressive success rate of 75.3% on her 6.31 defensive duels per 90.
Not only is she effective in defensive duels, but she also has the sharpness and game awareness to step out and make important defensive interceptions to prevent opposition attacks from developing, with her averaging 3.56 per 90.
In this example, Pujols is playing at right-back against Alaves. The first thing she does is get out to put pressure on the ball as soon as it is played to the winger. Then she slows down and sits, delaying her opponent and forcing her into making a decision.
Pujols is in control of the situation, and her body shape shows her opponent down the line. This manipulation eventually results in her opponent trying to drive down the line. Still, Pujols is able to react to win the race and physical battle and prevent any threat from occurring.
However, perhaps her most interesting characteristic is her ability to be efficient at both ends of the field. Her ability to create down the left flank as an overlapping full-back makes her a truly exciting prospect as she transitions to senior football.
Her efficiency in attack can be characterised by several vital statistics. The first to note is her cross accuracy — at 65.63% — leads the division. She is completing this success rate of 2.38 crosses per 90. As such, she has amassed an average xA of 0.15 per game, making her an important player that opponents have to account for.
Not only is she completing her crosses at a high rate though, but she is completing 1.93 dribbles per 90 at a success rate of 65.4%, which just offers another dimension to her game; this, in turn, enables her to get into more situations where she can play dangerous crosses into the box.
In this example, Pujols provides the numerical advantage to isolate the opposition player two against one. This enables her to be in space to play a dangerous left-footed cross into the box, which she can do by putting the ball on a plate for Ariana Arias to attack and duly convert with her head.
Laia Martret, forward, 18 years old
The next player we are going to highlight is Laia Martret. She is often overshadowed by the excitement that, rightly, surrounds attackers Vicky López and Giulia Dragoni. However, Martret is an impressive player in her own right. She has played 736 minutes of football for Barcelona II across nine games this term. In those minutes, she has demonstrated the ability to play across the front line as a left-winger, right-winger, and centre-forward. This flexibility makes her an impressive asset across the board.
The first reason that makes her so impressive is her ability to be dangerous as a key creator on the side. Her achieving a combined xG and xA total of 0.42 per 90 puts her in fifth place in the division. A lot of this is due to the variety of ways she is able to create goal-scoring opportunities, with her completing 1.59 through passes per 90 — the third highest in the division.
In addition, she is completing 0.61 key passes per 90, putting her level with teammate López and leads teammate Dragoni.
In addition, she has been completing 3.91 crosses per 90, the tenth highest in the division, at a success rate of 21.88%. As you can see by the above diagram, she completes a number of her crosses deep on the right; this is primarily due to her natural left footedness, where, as a result, she tends to cut in onto her left foot and cross from these sorts of positions and be effective.
Alongside her ability to create, she is equally impressive with the ball at her feet, where she completes an average of 4.77 dribbles per 90, which is the 14th-highest in the division and only bettered on her team by the López and Dragoni, who have completed 5.77 and 5.6 dribbles per 90 respectively. In addition to these dribbles, she has been averaging 2.32 progressive runs per 90, making her an essential asset in the side in terms of progressing the ball into the final third.
In this example here, Martret has the ball on the right flank, and she cuts back onto her favoured left foot and is able to play a floated cross towards sixteen-year-old attacker Celia Segura on the back post, who makes an exceptional header to loft the ball over the keeper and convert the chance.
The next side of her game we are going to highlight is her ability to convert as a goalscorer, with her totalling an xG of 2.84 over the season — the 11th-highest in the division. She is also, then, exceeding her xG by converting four goals so far this term. Part of this is down to her ability to effectively position herself in the box by making well-timed runs onto the back post.
In this example from earlier on in the season Barcelona winger Onyeka Palermo has driven down the line and got herself into a dangerous position down the right flank. While this is going on, Martret has identified the space on the back post and times her run expertly to arrive just as Palermo’s low-whipped cross reaches the back post for an easy tap-in finish for Martret.
However, not only is Martret effective in the attacking phase, she is an interesting player with lots of potential in the defensive phase as well, with her obtaining a defensive duel success rate of 80.95%, the third-highest in the division in her 5.14 defensive duels per 90.
However, she also allows the fifteenth most progressive passes, 8.93 per 90. This means that, potentially, it’s an area that she could be effective in if she looks to develop it in the future.
Conclusion
Barcelona II is a hotbed of talent, with players like Dragoni, López and Ariana Arias already being introduced into the first team. Here, we have outlined three new players who are realistically too good for the B team and should be pushing for either a place in the first team or, given how loaded Barcelona are as a team, moving on to another top-division side to make a name for themselves there.
However, despite highlighting these three players, there are many more coming through the Barcelona system, be that at the younger age groups or even other players in the B team, such as Ranera’s seventeen-year-old central defensive partner Emilia Szymczak, who has already made her senior Polish international team debut.
Comments