Seems that Ben has moved up this season from Alevín A to Infantil B: http://www.fcbarcelona.es/futbol/formativo/detalle/ficha/fc-barcelona-infantil-b-2012-2013
He's with his age group, Infantil B is all players born in 2000: http://www.fcbarcelona.es/futbol/formativo/detalle/ficha/fc-barcelona-infantil-b-2012-2013 For the birthdate bias people--note that 17 of the 22 players were born in the first four months of the year.
That is an interesting comment. I agree, regarding that the size discrepancy will evaporate with time. However, in the intervening years the older players are receiving the higher quality training and therefore have the advantage of the time, attention and expertise devoted to them. It will be very hard for younger players to overcome this disparity in experience after the discrepancy in both physical and mental maturity evens out. I am surprised to see this relative age effect perpetuated at a professional academy. I would have expected the financial incentive of producing as many salable assets as possible to have prompted them to make sure that they did not exclude 1/2 of the potential boys (assets) from consideration. Further, it seems that Barcelona staff are frequently quoted as saying size means nothing, but likely they are unaware that metal maturity, direclty associated with soccer IQ, that they opennly seek also directly cooresponds to a boy's age. By the way the B category is not "b" team it is a specific birth year, 2000. Infantil "A" is 1999 birth year.
Thanks for the clarification on A vs B. And while this is true that the older kids will receive more training at the younger ages, Barca will not stop scouting for talent for this age group. Players in the younger half of the age group will be getting training at other clubs in the area, and Barca will want to ensure the best players in Catalonia all play for them. Its not hard to imagine any player in the 2000 age group losing their spot to a kid a couple months younger that got better by training a lot with another club and then being picked up by Barca later on.
He signed a 2 year contract. he is in year two. hopefully they sign another youth contract to continue. if he makes it to 15-17 then we have a chance of him getting to reserves.
Does Ben have any intention of ever suiting up for the Stars and Stripes at any point, assuming he's called by whoever's running the MNT by then?
Bens dad is American but he has roots in Israel. He has already participated in the youth teams for USYNT. We shall see how it progresses but if he continues up the line it would be nice.
There is always the chance if he becomes good enough that spain will try to take him like they tried with Messi but that is probably a long shot.
Guys, we're getting ahead of ourselves. It's very exciting that Lederman is at La Masia, but he's 12. So much can happen between now and when we can realistically project him as a future star, and everything that goes with that, including nat'l team affiliation. It means very little if he's called into a U15 camp, much more if it's U20.
It's an extreme long shot. He doesn't have latin heritage to my knowledge. He'd need to live in Spain for ten years, basically meaning he'd be around 21 or 22 and would have had to refuse any and all youth camps, either for Israel or the US. He has a slightly higher chance of playing for Spain than I do.
Can somebody tell me about how his training as a child was so different from the other American kids?
His father. I'm guessing that usually makes the difference. Also his youth coaches back here I hear are some guys who try to imitate the barca style(and hate all things american soccer...).