The Villarreal leaders want to make it very clear. there is not one “Magical” reason behind the academy that produced Ballon d’Or winner Rodri.
Villarreal comes from a small industrial town of the same name in eastern Spain with a population of 50,000.
However, despite having a catchment area the size of Yeovil, the academy has trained world-renowned stars such as Rodri, Nicolas Jackson, Pau Torres and their current Spanish winger Alex Baena.
Over the past 25 years, Villarreal academy graduates have helped establish the club as a club of perennial achievement.
His first season in the top category of Spanish football was in 1998-99.
Since then they have qualified for Europe 19 times, reached the Champions League semi-finals three times – in 2006, 2016 and 2022 – and even beat Manchester United in the 2021 Europa League final.
This season, a rare one without European football, they are outperforming again.
The club, nicknamed the Yellow Submarines, is in fifth place, battling Athletic Bilbao for best of the rest in La Liga, behind Atlético Madrid, Real Madrid and Barcelona.
But Villarreal chief executive Fernando Roig stressed to BBC Sport that no person at the club “is a magician”.
“We haven’t hired Ted Lasso to make a big change,” he said.
So how does Villarreal do it?
