A Great New Way for Youngsters To Continue Their Development

The announcement was made this year to have a ‘miniature version’ of the Champion’s League tournament, with teams from across Europe entering squads containing U19 participants and each squad will be permitted three over-aged players who are no older than twenty years old.

This will give the young players a taste of competing and travelling against different methods of football rather than just the tests they receive playing domestically in their own countries, adding a bit of glamour to the young players yearly calendar.

Mark Warburton, former academy manager for Watford, is the man responsible for NextGen stating: “Apart from the exceptional few who jump straight to the first team, many promising young players graduating from academies were not provided with enough consistent high-quality football challenges.”

The format is widely regarded to consist of sixteen teams split into four groups of four, playing each other home and away. The top two teams from each group go through to a knockout stage. There is a possibility that this stage will be played in a selected country and It has not been revealed as of yet if the knockout stage will consist of two matches per round, as in the Champions League or a single match.

Teams were selected for the first season through invitation only. The creators selecting the sixteen clubs who were considered to have the best academies in Europe. More teams are thought to be involved in future as the competition expands. The organizers hope to have as many as twenty four clubs in the competition by the 2012-13 season.

The chosen academies were:

Liverpool F.C.

F.C. Internazionale Milano

Tottenham Hotspur F.C.

Aston Villa F.C.

F.C. Barcelona

F.C. Basel

Manchester City F.C.

Vfl Wolfsburg

Celtic F.C.

Sporting Club De Portugal

PSV Eindhoven

AFC Ajax

Fenerbache S.K.

Molde F.K.

Olympic de Marseille

Rosenborg B.K.

I believe it will add further value to the players transfer fees for the players who perform well in the competition just like the senior competition and may well help with participating clubs marketing value as of further articles and games being produced across the globe.

This article was written by Kenny Ward and is courtesy of our partner website thisisfutbol.com. Read the latest news and blogs about European Football at TiF. – ed

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