The Barça Residency Academy USA, opened in August 2017, is the first and to date only residential academy in the club's international program. Located in the city of Casa Grande (Arizona), it emerged from an agreement between FC Barcelona and Grande Sports World (GSA), and is one of the leading sports and educational residential academies in the United States for young soccer players.

With this project, the Barça Residency Academy has been able to offer a new training opportunity to its players in an idyllic setting; a perfect place for their comprehensive development. The Barça Residency Academy USA was named the best training facility by the US Soccer Federation (USSF) for three consecutive years, and provides boys and girls with compulsory education, university preparation, nutritional control, dormitories, a training complex and eight soccer fields.

Barça Residency Academy USA is directed by 2 Local Project Directors (LPD) who have come from the FC Barcelona coaching pool, and are in charge of implementing the Barça methodology in all football-related processes and ensuring that the style of play and Barça's values ​​are integrated by all coaches, players and teams.

Four teams play in MLS Next, the highest-level youth competition in North America, so the Barça Residency Academy works to ensure an adequate cohesion of competitive requirements with high-quality training, offering our students more opportunities to achieve their goals of becoming professional players and/or earning scholarships to top universities in the US. So far, all graduating players have either earned a college scholarship or signed a professional contract.

So the Barça Residency Academy is a great opportunity for players to continue training under the Barça methodology, with the clear goal of achieving football excellence.