In collaboration with GOAL, Voetbalzone regularly highlights young players who can go far in the future or who are already earning their spurs in (inter)national top football. This time, the focus is on 19-year-old midfielder Robert Navarro, who is learning from the best at Real Sociedad. The teenager had the opportunity to coach under Xabi Alonso and is now a teammate of David Silva.
In Spain, there are two youth academies that stand above the rest when it comes to developing young talents. One is Barcelona’s world-famous youth academy, La Masía, while the other, Real Sociedad’s Zubieta, is a little less well-known outside of Spain. Xabi Alonso, Mikel Oyarzabal and Xabi Prieto are just a few of the players who have made their breakthrough at the San Sebastian club in recent years and have represented Spain’s national team. The good work of the youth academy is emphasized by the fact that trainer Imanol Alguacil’s squad, which largely consists of their own youth, is currently the leader in LaLiga.
One player starting to make his mark on the first team is teenage talent Navarro. The midfielder has played in not one, but both of Spain’s highly regarded youth academies. Navarro was admitted to the Barcelona academy at the age of ten. Connoisseurs within the walls of La Masía considered him one of the greatest midfield talents in his age group.
Due to his great potential, Navarro made headlines in and outside Catalonia at the age of 16 when he left Barcelona in the summer of 2018. During the time Josep Maria Bartomeu was still president of the club, an exodus of young top talents took place. Xavi Simons went to Paris Saint-Germain, Sergio Gomez left for Borussia Dortmund, while Navarro – who has also attracted interest from Arsenal and Manchester City – chose Monaco after losing confidence in the path that Barca had charted for him. the first team.
Thanks to Kylian Mbappe’s breakthrough in the Stade Louis II, Monaco had a great attraction for talented young people. The Monegasques managed to bring both Navarro and his teammate Jordi Mboula from Barça to the principality. Navarro’s stay, however, lasted barely a year. He became the youngest debutant in the history of Monaco, when at the age of sixteen he was allowed to come in fifteen minutes before the end against Canal Roussilon (0-1 win) in the Coupe de France. This also turned out to be his only appearance for the club. Real Sociedad managed to bring Navarro back to his homeland in the summer of 2019. Los Txuri Urdines paid six million euros and offered him a three-year contract that could be extended for another three years.
Navarro’s arrival at Estadio Anoeta naturally aroused a great deal of interest, given his past. Perhaps most intriguingly, the teenager was able to develop under the wing of a club icon like Xabi Alonso. After his football retirement, Alonso was put in charge of Real Sociedad’s B-team, a team almost exclusively made up of its own youth players, which at the time played in the third tier in Spain.
In that position, Alonso got the growth brilliant Navarro under his wing. While the young midfielder did not immediately manage to excel on a weekly basis in his first season, his performances over the course of the 2020/21 season showed why the Basques were so eager to bring him in. In 26 games, the teenage talent has scored 11 goals and 5 assists. With this he had an important part in the promotion of Real Sociedad B to the Segunda División.
“Robert has enormous potential. He’s just a momentary footballer,” Alonso said at the start of Navarro’s prolific season. “If you like to show yourself and have creativity, you have to link that creativity to yield. Then you can become a good player and not just a beautiful one, and that’s what Robert has to work on at the moment.” Navarro’s performances in his second season with the club soon gave him a number of opportunities to train with Real Sociedad’s first team. He even made his debut for the main squad in December last year, when he came on in the last 35 minutes at the Camp Nou against his former club Barcelona (2-1 loss).
The midfielder then got no further than that one league game against Barça, but in the current season he has a bigger contribution. Navarro is currently a permanent fixture in the selection of trainer Alguacil. He has made four appearances in LaLiga so far. Being in the first team, the youngster will have the opportunity to learn from another legendary Spanish midfielder, teammate David Silva. “Training and playing next to him is incredible,” Navarro told SportsFinding.com. “When I train with him, I try to learn as much as possible. I’m still young, so he gives me a lot of advice. That way I can develop myself further. I try to show as much commitment as David Silva, because he is also a real pro.”
Navarro seems to be following Silva’s right advice. His performance against Levante (1-0 win) in August was Mundo Deportivo described as ‘terrifyingly good’ even though he was on the pitch for only eight minutes. The creative is known as a real dribbler. His right foot is what makes him so special. Both his passes and his shots are of pristine accuracy. And while he still has a long way to go in his development, he could hardly have had better teachers thus far. Navarro has the stamps ‘from La Masía’ and ‘from Zubieta’, something any Spanish footballer would envy. It looks like the creative midfielder will reap the benefits of this unique training.