A family trip to Barcelona in half term ticking off the sites and the obligatory trip to Camp Nou so that Callum (and I) could see the Barcelona stadium. Not what I expected - inspirational and potentially career changing.
Obviously Camp Nou is an impressive stadium, it's the second largest in the world with 96,000 seats. I recommend the tour of the museum and the stadium as being one of the best organised site seeing activities that I have ever seen but towards the end of 3.5 hours of entertainment and inspiration and immersion I re-entered the museum's section about The Masia.
I know that football clubs take boys (and girls) and sign them to academies and train them from early ages. I have first hand experience of this from the boys football team I coach in Nottingham. I know that some of the academies are famed and fabled and I know that it happens throughout sport but I have never seen anything presented like this.
The Masia itself is an eighteenth century house which still sits within the campus of Camp Nou. The boys were taken and trained, not only in how to play football (and also incidentally other sports including basketball, roller hockey, hand ball and others) but also on the values that would be required to learn about and to have instilled upon them in order to be successful in their chosen career. Sure, The Masia teaches football and a lot of football and has many incredible stars as it's alumni, but more important perhaps are the values that it extols and these are listed and returned to time and time again.
Effort
Team work
Ambition
Respect
Humility
You're perhaps best returning to that list and reading it once more.
If you were training a boys football team, training a dental team, training any team, raising a family or with your group of friends of perhaps anywhere in your life are there any better values to adhere to than those?
The way that Barcelona FC present The Masia is extraordinary. The way they believe in it as a club, as a community and as a region is inspiring. The philosophies that they demonstrate that they teach their young charges are almost unbelievable.
Perhaps even more impressive than this is their Barcelona's stated mission in the same part of the museum which includes the following phrase:
"At FC Barcelona we believe that football is a way to reach society and we have a desire to go further, to make our mark"
Barcelona FC casts an enormous positive shadow across the whole of Catalonia and it would appear that the concept of The Masia is proving quite successful.
For me, as always in these situations, the question is "what can I take home?". As a practice and an organisation we already speak to secondary school students (I did this last Friday) to encourage them into dentistry, telling a positive story of what a wonderful career it is and dumbing down the potential financial benefits that attract the wrong type of people.
I travelled to London recently with Chris Barrow to talk to dental students about what life is like after dentistry and we sponsor and support a second year dental intern at our practice in Matt Giudici who has been a revelation.
I make it my business to talk to new graduates as much as possible to encourage and help them into the profession.
We also train apprentice dental nurses and have plans to train apprentice technicians.
We have two exceptional young dentists within the practice that we are attempting to develop into the professional leaders of the future.
Not quite The Masia (yet) but Barcelona FC started over 100 years ago with an advert in the newspaper.
Footnote - In one of the seasons that Lionel Messi won the Ballon D'or, Iniesta and Xavi were second and third in the competition - all of them from The Masia.
Second footnote - despite controversy regarding Lionel Messi's financial situation (potentially explainable and understandable) the greatest player in the world has been at the same football club as a professional for 12 years which is almost unheard of in the modern game.
Effort | Team Work | Ambition | Respect | Humility
Blog Post Number: 1129
Leave a comment