Drive 15 minutes south from Girona, in the Spanish region of Catalonia, and you will find yourself surrounded by the low-rise sprawl of bland industrial estates near the city’s airport. Turn along a small road heading west, however, and the landscape immediately changes.
The contrast is so striking that for a moment you feel like you have entered The Shire, the imaginary world described in JRR Tolkien’s Lord Of The Rings and The Hobbit stories: rich meadows surrounded by volcanic hills, narrow lanes winding between them with wild poppies on either side, undisturbed by traffic. A tranquil place for slow living.
In the middle of this sea of calm lies the village of Estanyol, population 195.
This is where Pau Cubarsi lived until he was 11 years old, when he joined Barcelona’s youth academy, about an hour and a half’s drive away. Six years on, he still lives at Barca’s La Masia academy complex now, but he calls Estanyol home.
GO DEEPER
The power of Barcelona’s La Masia youth academy – and why for years it was ignored
Today, being enough of a football fan to subscribe to The Athletic, you will no doubt have heard of Cubarsi, but just months ago his name was only familiar to the most dedicated followers of the youth programmes of Barcelona or Spain’s national teams. It was only in January that the defender, then 16, made his senior debut off the bench in the last 16 of the Copa del Rey against third-tier side Unionistas de Salamanca.
He has not looked back.
Comparisons with Barca predecessors Gerard Pique and Carles Puyol are not far wrong.
Cubarsi in action for Barca in their 2024-25 La Liga opener at Valencia (Pedro Salado/Getty Images)
Cubarsi made his La Liga bow on January 21, the day before he turned 17, and went on to play 24 times for Barcelona over the second half of the season, becoming a crucial member of then-manager Xavi’s team.
He took his first Champions League steps in the second leg of the round of 16 tie against Napoli in March, performing brilliantly against the Italians’ highly-rated striker Victor Osimhen — not many are named player of the match on their elite European debut. Then, in the first leg of the quarter-final against Paris Saint-Germain the following month, he also handled Kylian Mbappe admirably.
GO DEEPER
Cubarsi, 17, is showing on the big stage why he is an exceptional talent
When Cubarsi stepped out with the other Barca players onto the Parc des Princes pitch before that latter game, as the group took a stroll in the hours leading up to kick-off, a section of fans already in the stands aimed abusive chants towards them. Cubarsi stood there smiling, with his hands in his pockets, even managing a chuckle.
The image was surprising. In the end, he was still a 17-year-old boy about to play in hostile territory on one of the biggest stages in world football, and against perhaps the sport’s best current player in Mbappe.
But the Frenchman was quiet that night, thanks to the efforts of Cubarsi and fellow defenders Jules Kounde and Ronald Araujo. Every time Cubarsi faced Mbappe, he did so with that same calmness he had shown pre-game — it’s a state of mind which has roots in his upbringing.
The fields around Estanyol (Laia Cervello Herrero/The Athletic)
The tranquillity of Estanyol, and of a family that has for generations run their carpentry business there, passes through the veins of a young man seemingly unaffected by his meteoric rise to sporting fame. That calmness is so key to Cubarsi’s game, too. The way he plays matches without rushing. As if, in the end, football really is just a game and he is just a kid out to have a good time. He takes his time on the ball and rarely picks a bad pass.
Estanyol’s residences are scattered disparately across a large area. What you would call the centre of the village is formed by a small church, one house, a restaurant and the Cubarsi carpentry shop. In the middle of this collection of buildings is a square, where the local children gather to play. It is a world away from the excesses and glamour of elite football.
Albert and Judith are the owners of that restaurant, L’ArEst. They used to live in Girona, but after the Covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020, they decided to move in search of a quieter life. Now, they live next door to the Cubarsis’ carpentry shop.
“Robert, Pau’s father, is a hard worker,” Albert says. “He gets up every day at 7am and switches on the machine in his workshop. It’s a noisy machine and sometimes it wakes me up. But I always get my revenge…
“I take round a tray of xuixos (a pastry filled with Catalan cream, then fried and coated in sugar) that we make in the restaurant and leave them at their door,” Albert continues with a grin on his face, explaining he does this because he knows that Pau’s father is on a diet so should not eat such treats.
Both he and Judith get on well with the Cubarsis. They describe the footballer’s parents as hardworking and very good neighbours, the kind of people who are there to help if something happens. “You can’t say that about all the neighbours,” Judith says, as Albert jokingly complains that Robert “sings very badly”.
Albert says Cubarsi comes back to town often, whenever he can, and that he can often be seen carrying wood to help his dad with the family business. He says with conviction that the teenager is not the “typical young player” who might “go astray”, that the environment in which he was brought up would never allow it.
Despite the fact their 17-year-old son is already a first-team Barcelona player, Robert and Judith have not stopped doing what they have done all their lives: being carpenters. They, too, have had much to handle, including a media tsunami that has accompanied Cubarsi’s remarkable rise to the first team. They appreciate the interest in him but want to stay out of the spotlight.
Estanyol does not have a football pitch. Cubarsi’s first team as a boy were based in nearby Vilablareix, on the outskirts of Girona. That is also where he went to primary school. At the age of eight, Girona heard about this central defender with potential and signed him. Then, in 2018, when he was 11, Barcelona’s youth academy directors Jordi Roura and Aureli Altamira came knocking.
Estanyol’s village centre (Laia Cervello Herrero/The Athletic)
“We found out about him through one of the many observers we had distributed around Catalonia,” Roura told The Athletic.
“We received information that Girona had a centre-back who was showing promise and we went to see him several times. The last time was at a tournament in Cornella de Llobregat, near Barcelona’s city centre. We decided to talk to his parents and explain the sporting project at Barca; what we had in mind and why we wanted to sign him. That was key to him coming here.
“The issue of centre-backs has never been easy for us to solve. Playing as a centre-back at Barca is not like playing as a centre-back elsewhere. It’s a position that is very demanding, firstly because Barca normally play in the opposition half, with a lot of space at the back. You have to defend a lot of space, which can lead to lots of tough one-on-one situations and you have to be very quick.
“Also, they have a very big responsibility in the beginning of attacking play. We always looked for young players who had good feet, who were good at seeing passes, who were good at making deep passes. Pau, apart from having all that, defensively he was very good. Very serious, very strong, he had a good aerial game and understanding of defensive concepts — that’s very difficult to find.”
Roura also says Barca were surprised by the maturity they found in Cubarsi, even at 11 years old.
“We found him to be a very well-rounded boy for his age, very intelligent,” he says. “He was perhaps a bit introverted. Many times I would tell him to laugh a bit, that it was just football. He was a boy who was very focused, with a lot of will to learn and improve. It seems obvious, but not every young player has that.”
Albert Puig was one of the first coaches Cubarsi had at Barcelona, in the 2019-20 season, at under-12 level.
“The first memory I have of Pau is from before I coached him,” Puig says. “He arrived in the 2018-19 season as a senior Alevin (under-11 age group). In a game against UE Sant Andreu, there was an action where an opposing striker was left alone and Pau fouled him outside the box. He was shown a straight red card, something unusual in games involving such young kids.
GO DEEPER
Barcelona’s transfer window raises the question: How do they convince new signings now?
“When a child of that age is shown a red card, they usually get very upset, they shout and even cry. Their emotions are running high. But Pau accepted it as a part of the game. He went away so calmly and just started to watch from off the pitch. It was the image of a player a few steps ahead in terms of maturity.”
Cubarsi, right, helped Spain win men’s football gold at the recent Olympics (John Todd/ISI/Getty Images)
Cubarsi, like fellow 17-year-old Lamine Yamal, is now a fully-fledged member of the Barcelona first team. Both have impressed observers with their composure and ability to cope with the pressures of elite football. Yamal was part of the Spain squad that won the European Championship in July. Cubarsi picked up gold at the Paris Olympics a few weeks later.
GO DEEPER
How to spot a La Masia star: The secrets of Barcelona’s youth academy
How is it possible that they can display such maturity at such an age? Puig believes a change in how youth football is played has to be part of the answer.
“A lot has changed at grassroots level,” Puig says. “Now there are so many tournaments that are followed by the media and available to watch on social networks that they are already growing up with a certain amount of name recognition, even if it is on a small scale. They get used to it earlier.
“The pressures of elite level are multiplied many times over, but they already have a base from which to make the leap.”
(Top photo: Eric Alonso/Getty Images)
