Vidal’s Arrival Made Barcelona “Latino”

DBasia.news – Barcelona got Latin American player to the squad. This time, they sealed the Chile midfielder, Arturo Vidal.

In total, there are 19 non-Spanish players in the Barcelona squad. Half of them came from Latin America. Before Vidal, Blaugrana had duo Brasil, Malcom and Arthur.

Within the past decade, Barcelona trusted the Latin American player. Not only from Brasil and Argentine, but also Colombia, Uruguay, and Mexico.

For this season, Brasil is the dominant country in Barcelona. With the arrival of Malcom and Arthur, Samba country contributed 5 players. While Argentine, Colombia, Chile, and Uruguay gave one player each. This excludes the loan-status player like Douglas and Paulinho.

The close relationship between Barcelona and Latin America especially Brasil was initiated since 1931. At that time, it was the first time Barcelona got the Brasilian players: Fernando, Jaquare Bezerra, and Fausto dos Santos.

But at that time, there was a regulation of foreign player ban, so these three players just performed in the friendly match.

From the three players, Fausto dos Santos was the biggest talent Barcelona ever had. With his help, Barcelona liked Brasilian players.

Barcelona’s interest in Latin American especially Brasil player was getting bigger since they got a great player, Luicidio da Silva Batista from Palmeiras in 1948.

No wonder in Barcelona history book there were big names of Brasilian players, like Evaristo, Romario, Ronaldo, Rivaldo, Ronaldinho, and Neymar. Also Edmilson, Sonny Anderson, Geovani, Fabio Rochemback, Sylvinho, Belletti, Adriano, and Maxwell.

If we see behind, Barcelona were targetting Latin American player in 1915, far before the trio Brasil came in 1931. In 1915, Barcelona got Juan Garchitorena from Argentine. Though came from Argentine, Garchitorena played as Spanish.

Argentine was the second biggest player supplier in Latin America. There were many Argentine’s great names came to Barcelona. Just like Manuel Pellegrino, Juan Roman Riquelme, Javier Saviola, Gabriel Milito, Javier Mascherano, and Diego Maradona and of course Lionel Messi.

But for Messi, the star might be excluded from the foreign player list. He was the product of Barcelona academy, La Masia.

Not only Brasil and Argentine, Barcelona also expanded their wings to other Latin American countries. In recent years, Azulgrana were strengthened by Mexican, Chelsea, Uruguay, and also Colombia. They were Rafa Marquez, Martin Caceres, Alexis Sanchez, Claudio Bravo, Luis Suarez, Yerry Mina, and recently Arturo Vidal.