In the next few weeks, the city of Nashville, TN will be opening the tenth Barça Academy site in the United States. This consolidates the US as the territory with the largest proportion of the 54 FC Barcelona academies throughout the world.

The growth of the Barça Academy project in the United States ties in with the opening of a the club’s commercial office in the heart of New York. Indeed, the announcement and opening of these ten soccer schools have all come in the wake of the club setting up a new home in the Big Apple in the summer of 2016. The ten Barça Academies are in Austin, Charlotte, Chicago, Columbus, Nashville, Northern Virginia, Orlando and San Diego, as well as the Barça Academy Pro New York and the Barça Residency Academy Arizona. In North America there are a further six schools in Canada and two in Mexico (Mexico City Puebla), and there are 27 in total throughout the Americas.

The Barça Academy Nashville is on the grounds of Father Ryan High School, which has superb sports facilities in southern Tennessee. The management of Sporting Global, the club’s partner in running the new school, plans to start the season with about 200 children and lift the number to 500 during its first few months of operation.

Fifty-four permanent Barça Academy projects in all five continents

Barça Academies are FC Barcelona's own football schools for boys and girls, and which focus on the comprehensive education of its pupils. The model has been exported internationally, the idea being to expand the Barça brand and teach the rest of the world about the club’s philosophy and values.

The schools work with their own, unique system based on the same methodology that Barça uses from its youngest academy teams through to the senior team, encouraging a creative and attack-minded style of play indispensably combined with the teaching of values: respect, humility, effort, ambition and teamwork, with proven success.

FC Barcelona currently has a total of 54 Barça Academy projects around the world, plus more than 180 campuses and 50 clinics, in 56 countries on all five continents, involving more than 45,000 children in the different activities that they run.

The Barça Academy projects are divided into Barça Escola Barcelona, the Barça Academy Pro in Haikou (China) and New York (USA), Barça Residency Academy Arizona (USA) and the 59 Barça Academies in all five continents.