Barcelona must decide how to use Ansu Fati this season

Photo by Robbie Jay Barratt - AMA/Getty Images

Will he get enough opportunities in the first team?

Ansu Fati has broken a couple of records already. The 16-year-old phenom is turning heads at FC Barcelona by showcasing skills and maturity beyond his years. But now, Luis Suárez and Lionel Messi are back fit and Ousmane Dembélé is not far behind. How should Ernesto Valverde manage Fati going forward?

There are four options.

One is to maintain Fati in the senior team through every training session and decide at the end whether he will play or not. That would allow him to learn from the best and maximize his chances of getting playing time with the senior side. The downside is he may not be able to play much with Suárez, Messi, Dembélé, and Antoine Griezmann surely ahead of him. That’s a big problem for a 16-year-old player.

Another option is to send him back to the B team and let him play more. He would still go to training sessions and some matches with the senior team on an as-needed basis. This would give him optimal playing time to develop, although perhaps his chances in the senior side this season would be lower.

There is a sort of compromise option. Allow Fati to train mostly with the senior team but then do the final training session with the B team unless Valverde plans to use him. That would allow him to train with the top players and get chances to play with all the big guns, but also give him a chance to feature for the B team regularly. One possible problem is he would not be fully integrated with the B team, and it may affect him. And perhaps he wouldn’t be fully tuned to the senior side either.

Of course, there is one final possibility. Return him to Victor Valdés’s Juvenil A team, the team he was originally thought to be playing for this season. While this would guarantee him playing time and less pressure, it’s hard not to see it as a step backwards. Something way too conservative.

In the end, it’s up to the manager to choose. But I want to ask you. What would you do with Fati? Please respond to the poll and comment your reasoning below.

Source: barcablaugranes.com