2011-2012 Nextgen Series

[Chazza]

This should be really good

LFC enter Euro U19s tournament

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

http://www.liverpoolfc.tv/news/lates...19s-tournament

[Barnie7]

Excellent idea...will bring valuable experience for the U19´s

[Lee]

Excellent idea...will bring valuable experience for the U19´s

Looking forward to this. Can only be a good thing IMO.

[Alex]

Brilliant, and the fact that there is no Man U or Arsenal can only be a good thing.

[Chrono]

Think it will be televised? I really hope so. I can also see us doing pretty well in this.

[RedReet]

Did teams apply to take part or were they invited? How did the mighty Molde get in, or were we the only clubs in Europe interested?

[Chazza]

Found a bit more info here

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.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/sport/...tion-1.1104570

[Chazza]

EXCLUSIVE: Now the top kids in Europe get a Champions League of their own

Manchester City will face Barcelona in the headline fixture of a Champions League-style tournament for Under 19s this season.

Liverpool, Tottenham and Aston Villa are also in the UEFA tournament, dubbed the NextGen Series, which will consist of 16 clubs in four groups.

After England’s disappointing first-round exit from the Under 21 European Championship, the competition is seen as the ideal platform to improve the quality of opposition for younger players and give them valuable experience of an elite competition.

Manchester United, Arsenal and Chelsea are waiting to come in next season, along with Ajax.

The inaugural line-up has been determined by invitation and recommendation, influenced by the quality of each club’s academy. There is one more place to be confirmed.

NextGen is the brainchild of former Watford academy manager Mark Warburton and will pit some of the best young sides in Europe against each other home and away in a tournament that will start in August with the knockout stages in January.

Sportsmail revealed how the project was being formulated last year when Manchester City played Ajax in a friendly in Amsterdam. City are considered to be major players in the development of this tournament as they increase their profile around the world.

All the fixtures are yet to be finalised but it is understood that Villa are in a group with Norway’s Rosenborg and Fenerbahce of Turkey, and City and Barcelona will face Celtic and Marseille.

The top two teams in each group will go forward to a finals competition. TV rights are being negotiated and the finals could be staged in Abu Dhabi.

Warburton, a former professional footballer who established the Harefield Academy and helped Watford become the first English professional club to combine full-time academic learning and football, pioneered the competition to help prepare promising young players for top-level football.

He is now sporting director at League One club Brentford, and said: ‘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.’

Although the costs will be high, clubs have jumped at the idea as they look to improve the quality of players graduating from their academies and, crucially, tempt top young players from other clubs with the chance of playing in Europe.

Liverpool and Chelsea are among the clubs to have raised concerns about the level of investment in their academies and how it has failed to correlate with the end product.

Now they hope this can help bridge the gap in the development of young stars.

It is expected that the competition will grow as more heavyweight clubs rush to join in. The early European Cup, launched in 1955-56, also started as a relatively small competition and then mushroomed.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/foo...Under-19s.html

[PTP]

hmm sounds very very interesting - great for their development.

I like the

"plus one team to be named"

- what next...special guest referee Zinedine Zidane for the final

[RichC]

Another way to try and generate money, smart if it works and it could push a lot of youngsters to improve

[RedReet]

The timing probably couldn't be much better for us, now that we do have some genuine young talent that need decent competition to develop.

[IN_RAFA_WE_TRUST]

Excellent will be watching. I predict Barcelona will go far in this.

[PTP]

The timing probably couldn't be much better for us, now that we do have some genuine young talent that need decent competition to develop.

i read, i think on twitter last night that when the current youth coaches from spain took over 2 years ago we had a total of two youth players representing england across the various age groups

We know have like 26 or something

[lickedlollipop]

Excellent will be watching. I predict Barcelona will go far in this.

i really, really hope that our kids kick their asses

[RedReet]

i read, i think on twitter last night that when the current youth coaches from spain took over 2 years ago we had a total of two youth players representing england across the various age groups

We know have like 26 or something

2 seems a bit far fetched to me though. Coady has captained England at numerous age groups and I imagine Wisdom was an International in younger groups too. Surely they wouldn't be the only two?