Introducing Francesco Camarda: UEFA Youth League, Matchday 1

An in-depth scouting round-up. Features an Mbappé, a Mellberg, and more.

The UEFA Youth League is back! Europe’s premier club youth competition returns for another season, fresh off a campaign that fostered exciting underdog stories for probably the first time in its decade-long history.

AZ Alkmaar won it all, if you remember. They went all the way through the Domestic Champions pathway, beating the likes of Barcelona, Real Madrid and Sporting CP en route to the final. There they met Hajduk Split, another bolter that managed to defeat Manchester City, Borussia Dortmund and AC Milan to get there. Absolutely nobody could have foreseen that final this time last year - and that’s why youth football is fun.

What can you expect from the tenth edition of the UEFA Youth League? Excitement is guaranteed, as is future top-level talent. You should also look forward to our scouting round-ups of every matchday. We’ll pick out the standout performers, intriguing talents and noteworthy talking points of each round of games.

And they will be exclusive to our paid subscribers, too, because nobody covers it like us. If you’re not a fully-fledged member of our little community, you definitely should be. Subscribe now.

That’s how the first matchday played out in its entirety. Lots of goals, some standard results, some surprising ones too. We need to stress that this round-up only includes games that we watched, and it’s become increasingly difficult to watch the UEFA Youth League.

But you can watch four games of every matchday on UEFA.tv, and it’s always worth doing a hopeful search or two on YouTube for the few clubs that live stream their games on there.

Anyway, less waffle, more scouting. Let’s tuck into matchday one…