LFC enter Euro U19s tournament

[the count]

Liverpool Football Club can today confirm it will compete against some of Europe's top clubs in a Champions League-style U19s tournament which starts in 2011-12.


Sixteen clubs including Barcelona and Inter Milan have confirmed their involvement in The Nextgen Series - a six-month format which allows the continent's top young footballers to compete against each other week in, week out for the first time.

Manchester City, Tottenham Hotspur, PSV, Celtic and Sporting Lisbon will also take part.

Sanctioned by UEFA and the FA, the tournament has been established to help Europe's best teenagers make the transition from youth football to senior level.

Four groups of four teams will battle it out home and away from August, with the top two progressing to the knockout stages which begin in January.

The tournament is the brainchild of ex-pro and former Watford Academy manager Mark Warburton and TV producer Justin Andrews.

Warburton said: "The Nextgen Series will provide a cognitive learning environment for players to experience how best to cope with the pressures of top-level football."

Organisers believe young players will benefit from travelling abroad and facing new styles of play, as well as being officiated by top referees and having to deal with media interest.

Clubs confirmed include Barcelona, Inter Milan, Liverpool, Manchester City, Tottenham Hotspur, Aston Villa, Marseille, Sporting Lisbon, Wolfsburg, Molde, PSV, Celtic, FC Basel, Fenerbahce and Rosenborg.

For more information visit www.nextgenseries.com

Author: Jimmy Rice

 

[Fabio]

Re: Re: LFC enter Euro U19s tournament

Ooo I like that idea

 

[RolandG]

That's brilliant!

 

[Jack D Rips]

So we're in Europe after all. Brill!

 

[HC]

DETAILS of the new Champions League-style youth competition in which Celtic will be involved this coming season are so hard to come by you could have sworn they were subject to a superinjunction.

Organisers Cycad Sports Management are desperate to co-ordinate the clocks right across Europe and announce the event in a blaze of publicity in a fortnight’s time so there was a mild bout of apoplexy in some quarters when Celtic’s website yesterday revealed that the Parkhead side had been drawn against Barcelona, Manchester City and French outfit Marseille in the inaugural running of the ‘invitation only’ event, which will pit 16 of the top clubs in Europe at Under-19 level in a group stage format, with the top two sides in each group progressing to a televised finals tournament in Abu Dhabi in January.

Although the final guest list for the most exclusive teenage party in European football remains shrouded in secrecy, Herald Sport has managed to glean some other nuggets of information. The event has a working title of the Next Generation League, and Cycad are a management company set up by Mark Warburton, a former Brentford first-team coach, in 2010.

The event is scheduled to expand from 16 to 24 teams for its second season and, regardless of this expansion, Celtic will retain exclusivity in the Scottish market for three years. While Rangers are on the outside looking in, Liverpool, Chelsea, Tottenham Hotspur, Sporting Lisbon, Ajax and AC Milan are also believed to be involved in the competition, with Arsenal one of the teams already desperate to form part of the second wave.

The event is backed by a private investor and all expenses for travelling and accommodation will be covered. Matches will involve players born after January 1993, which in Celtic’s case includes the likes of Tony Watt, the former Airdrie United striker, and Czech twins Filip and Patrick Twardzik, and the team managed by Tommy McIntyre and Stevie Frail.

The group stages will run from August to December with home ties to be played at Celtic Park if scheduling allows. The Parkhead club’s first planned encounters include the rather daunting double header of Barcelona at home and Manchester City away.

There is one minor fly in the ointment, however. The tournament has yet to receive the formal blessing of Uefa and Fifa, which means Celtic still have to go through the laborious process of applying for permission to play. The club hope this is a formality. Few Scottish teams, after all, receive guarantees to play in pan-European competition these days.

“Celtic would obviously need backing from the SFA and the SPL to participate, just like any other tournament, but all the games are midweeks so it wouldn’t interfere with Under-19s matches,” said the club’s head of youth Chris McCart, who has been involved in discussions with the group since the very beginning of the process, some 18 months ago. “What we will look to do now is make those discussions more formal and request in writing. You go through the protocol like any other procedure. The logistics of getting a tournament of this magnitude together are always a bit of doubt so it is great that all the clubs have backed it and signed up for it.”

McCart is in no doubt of the magnitude of the challenge that awaits his side. “Barcelona have got such a strong brand name, Manchester City are perhaps the richest club in the world, and Marseille have got an excellent system, so three of the four have already won the European Cup in their history,” he said. “I don’t think any of the groups will be stronger than ours. But our main purpose is to develop Champions League players and this event replicates exactly the same process that first-team players will go through. We can also offer players the opportunity of playing against the likes of Barcelona and Manchester City on the big stage and in big stadia, so it’s excellent from our recruitment point of view too. We have signed up to it for the next three years and we are really excited about it.”

The competition was launched after a successful pilot last season, in which Celtic defeated Liverpool 3-1 in Glasgow. It is an exciting venture, even if those closest to it might be happier keeping it under wraps at the moment. “It is still subject to a huge amount of change, there is still a huge amount of work to do and some of the fixture times may change,” a spokesman for the competition said last night. “But the contracts we have with the various clubs are set in stone.”

It might not make up for missing out on the Champions League, but the Next Generation League might just be the next best thing.


Shite name, nice concept.

I'm sure this'll end up on sky sports too.