And that's a wrap: UEFA Youth League, Matchday 6
The standouts from the final round of group stage games in 2023/24.
And that’s a wrap. The teams that can potentially win the UEFA Youth League have been whittled down to 24.
We have eight teams already confirmed through to the Round of 16, after topping their Champions League path groups. They are: Milan, Copenhagen, Feyenoord, Lens, Manchester City, Porto, Real Madrid, and Salzburg.
Tomorrow, we will find out the matchups between the Domestic Champions path winners and the group runners-up. The Domestic Champions path winners are:
AZ Alkmaar, last season’s champions, FC Basel, FC Midtylland, 1. FSV Mainz 05, Nantes, Olympiacos, FK Partizan and Žilina
These teams will all host a runner-up from the Champions path. Those teams are:
Atlético Madrid, FC Barcelona, Bayern München, Borussia Dortmund, Braga, Internazionale, RB Leipzig and Sevilla
José Mourinho wouldn’t have described this group stage as ‘football heritage’: perhaps more than ever before in this competition we had teams constantly changing line-ups and often not fielding full strength XIs for various reasons.
But we still got to see a great selection of the absolute cream of the crop from Europe’s best academies.
Porto, Barça, City, Salzburg, Real Madrid and Lens all impressed, while the likes of Feyenoord’s Leo Sauer and Antoni Milambo, Real Madrid’s Nico Paz, Crvena zvezda’s Jovan Mijatović and Manchester United’s Kobbie Mainoo have all played UEFA Youth League minutes this season before stepping up into the Champions League proper.
The pipelines get ever stronger at these clubs, and the players continue to be streamlined into senior football earlier than ever before.
But that brings us to MD6. There were not too many games of consequence left, but we’ve got another rundown for you on some new players we’ve not touched on yet in this group stage. Scroll on for standout talents…
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