Barcelona are to open up their first ever academy outside of Spain and it will be less than two miles from Chelsea's training ground in Surrey. The Catalan giants will begin staging coaching classes for 300 hopefuls between the ages of six and 16 from April at ACS school in Cobham.
The school, which is close to Chelsea's training ground, is attended by the children of Didier Drogba and Yossi Benayoun.
Barca appreciate that they will be competing for promising talent with the reigning Premier League champions, but believe both sides will benefit from the initiative.
Academy coach Xevi Marce said: "We are not coming here to be in competition with Chelsea.
"We are going to start slowly but surely to build a team here, train all the kids and get that passion.
"In the future we might lose a player or two to Chelsea or the other way around. It is not a problem."
