BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Hansi Flick has Barcelona clicking again, and the best player in the club’s history has taken notice.
Lionel Messi praised Flick’s willingness to give Barcelona's youth players chances to play. That bet has paid off handsomely and invigorated a Barcelona side that is playing its best soccer since Messi's tearful exit three years ago.
“It makes me proud to see how the team is represented now. This Barça is spectacular,” Messi said in an interview with Catalan television TV3 on Friday.
Messi and other members of his great Barcelona team like Andrés Iniesta and Xavi Hernández were themselves products of the club’s famed training system. Lamine Yamal now leads a new group of products of La Masia academy.
“This happened when I arrived at the club at age 13,” Messi said. “I think it is great that these kids have had these chances over the past couple of years. When you give them the opportunity and show them confidence, they respond in this fashion because they know the club better than anyone and know how the team wants to play. Good things are happening just like with the previous generation.”
Xavi, Flick’s predecessor until he was fired last season, was the first to tap into this rich new vein of budding talent by giving starts to Yamal when he was just 15. Xavi also opened the door for defender Pau Cubarsí and midfielder Fermín López to join the senior squad.
Flick has continued along that same path despite being a complete newcomer to the club.
Instead of pressing the club to sign a holding midfielder upon his arrival, the German manager took several youth players on Barcelona's pre-season summer tour. From that experience he found Marc Bernal, who played well at the holding position until he ruptured his ACL after just three games.
Then Flick dug deeper and found a true gem in Marc Casadó, who has taken the position by storm and recently earned his Spain debut. It total Flick has given four youth players their debuts in his first three months with the club.
Casadó was one of six players under the age of 22 who started for Barcelona, led by 17-year-olds Yamal and Cubarsí, in two recent wins over Real Madrid (4-0) and Bayern Munich (4-1).
“It’s an honor that the best player here from Barça in the history says this and that he follows how the team is playing and how the young players are doing,” Flick said about Messi’s comments. “You see his whole heart is with this club and it means a lot for us and this team.”
Barcelona visits Celta Vigo on Saturday leading the Spanish league by six points over Madrid.
Yamal will miss the Celta match due to a right-ankle injury that also ruled him out for Spain during last week's international break. Barcelona lost 1-0 at Real Sociedad in its last game, with Yamal already sidelined with the ankle issue.
Flick said they don't want to rush their new star back too early.
“Lamine is very important for us, but we have to adapt and we have players who can play for him,” Flick said. “When is back it is important that he is 100%.”
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Barcelona's head coach Hansi Flick gestures during the Spanish La Liga soccer match between Real Sociedad and Barcelona at the Anoeta stadium, in San Sebastian, Spain, Sunday, Nov. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Miguel Oses)
FERGUS FALLS, Minn. (AP) — A jury convicted two men of charges related to human smuggling for their roles in an international operation that led to the deaths of a family of Indian migrants who froze while trying to cross the Canada-U.S. border during a 2022 blizzard.
Harshkumar Ramanlal Patel, 29, an Indian national who prosecutors say went by the alias “Dirty Harry,” and Steve Shand, 50, an American from Florida, were part of a sophisticated illegal operation that has brought increasing numbers of Indians into the U.S., prosecutors said.
They were each convicted on four counts related to human smuggling, including conspiracy to bring migrants into the country illegally.
“This trial exposed the unthinkable cruelty of human smuggling and of those criminal organizations that value profit and greed over humanity,” Minnesota U.S. Attorney Andy Luger said.
“To earn a few thousand dollars, these traffickers put men, women and children in extraordinary peril leading to the horrific and tragic deaths of an entire family. Because of this unimaginable greed, a father, a mother and two children froze to death in sub-zero temperatures on the Minnesota-Canadian border,” Luger added.
The most serious counts carry maximum sentences of up to 20 years in prison, the U.S. Attorney’s Office told The Associated Press before the trial. But federal sentencing guidelines rely on complicated formulas. Luger said Friday that various factors will be considered in determining what sentences prosecutors will recommend.
Federal prosecutors said 39-year-old Jagdish Patel; his wife, Vaishaliben, who was in her mid-30s; their 11-year-old daughter, Vihangi; and 3-year-old son, Dharmik, froze to death Jan. 19, 2022, while trying to cross the border into Minnesota in a scheme Patel and Shand organized. Patel is a common Indian surname, and the victims were not related to Harshkumar Patel.
The couple were schoolteachers, local news reports said. The family was fairly well off by local standards, living in a well-kept, two-story house with a front patio and a wide veranda.
Experts say illegal immigration from India is driven by everything from political repression to a dysfunctional American immigration system that can take years, if not decades, to navigate legally. Much is rooted in economics and how even low-wage jobs in the West can ignite hopes for a better life.
Before the jury’s conviction on Friday, the federal trial in Fergus Falls, Minnesota, saw testimony from an alleged participant in the smuggling ring, a survivor of the treacherous journey across the northern border, border patrol agents and forensic experts.
Defense attorneys were pitted against each other, with Shand’s team arguing that he was unwittingly roped into the scheme by Patel.
Patel’s lawyers, The Canadian Press reported, said their client had been misidentified. They said “Dirty Hary,” the alleged nickname for Patel found in Shand’s phone, is a different person. Bank records and witness testimony from those who encountered Shand near the border didn’t tie him to the crime, they added.
Prosecutors said Patel coordinated the operation while Shand was a driver. Shand was to pick up 11 Indian migrants on the Minnesota side of the border, prosecutors said. Only seven survived the foot crossing. Canadian authorities found two parents and their young children later that morning, dead from the cold.
The trial included an inside account of how the international smuggling ring allegedly works and who it targets.
Rajinder Singh, 51, testified that he made over $400,000 smuggling over 500 people through the same network that included Patel and Shand. Singh said most of the people he smuggled came from Gujarat state. He said the migrants would often pay smugglers about $100,000 to get them from India to the U.S., where they would work to pay off their debts at low-wage jobs in cities around the country. Singh said the smugglers would run their finances through “hawala,” an informal money transfer system that relies on trust.
The pipeline of illegal immigration from India has long existed but has increased sharply along the U.S.-Canada border. The U.S. Border Patrol arrested more than 14,000 Indians on the Canadian border in the year ending Sept. 30, which amounted to 60% of all arrests along that border and more than 10 times the number two years ago.
By 2022, the Pew Research Center estimates more than 725,000 Indians were living illegally in the U.S., behind only Mexicans and El Salvadorans.
Jamie Holt, a Special Agent with Homeland Security Investigations, said the case is a stark reminder of the realities victims of human smuggling face.
“Human smuggling is a vile crime that preys on the most vulnerable, exploiting their desperation and dreams for a better life,” Holt said. “The suffering endured by this family is unimaginable and it is our duty to ensure that such atrocities are met with the full force of the law.”
One juror Kevin Paul, of Clearwater, Minnesota, told reporters afterward that it was hard for the jurors to see the pictures of the family’s bodies. He said he grew up in North Dakota and is familiar with the kind of conditions that led to their deaths.
“It’s pretty brutal,” Paul said. “I couldn’t imagine having to do what they had to do out there in the middle of nowhere.”
Minnesota U.S. Attorney Andy Luger addresses reporters on Friday, Nov. 22, 2024, at the federal courthouse in Fergus Falls, Minn., after two men were found guilty of human smuggling charges in connection with a case that led to the deaths of a family of four from India, who tried to cross the Canada-U.S. border during a blizzard in 2022. (AP Photo/Mark Vancleave)
FILE - Road signage is posted just outside of Emerson, Manitoba on Thursday, Jan. 20, 2022. (John Woods/The Canadian Press via AP)
In an image released by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, shows how the migrants who survived the crossing were terribly inadequately dressed. (U.S. Attorney's Office via AP)
In an undated image released by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, shows items found in a migrant child’s backpack. (U.S. Attorney's Office via AP)
FILE - Road signage is posted just outside of Emerson, Manitoba, Jan. 20, 2022. (John Woods/The Canadian Press via AP, File)
The Edward J. Devitt U.S. Courthouse and Federal building is seen, where two men on trial face human smuggling charges, Monday, Nov. 18, 2024, in Fergus Falls, Minn. (AP Photo/Michael Goldberg)
This combination image shows left to right; undated photo released by the Sherburne County Sheriff’s Office shows Harshkumar Patel in Elk River, Minn., and undated photo released by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement shows Steve Shand. (AP Photo)
FILE - A border marker, between the United States and Canada is shown just outside of Emerson, Manitoba, on Thursday, Jan. 20, 2022. (John Woods/The Canadian Press via AP, File)
