Manchester City have made the decision to pull out of next season’s Reserve League to focus fully on the new NextGen Series – a European Under-19s tournament which imitates the format of the Champions’ League. The 16-team competition will attempt to mimic the timetable of its senior counterpart and is aimed at providing youngsters opportunities to play in regular, competitive European fixtures to better prepare them for senior professional football.
Fifteen clubs have been invited by recommendation with a further team to be decided. They include City, Liverpool, Aston Villa, Tottenham and Celtic as the British representatives, in addition to Barcelona, Sporting Lisbon, Molde, PSV Eindhoven, Marseilles, Rosenborg, FC Basle, Internazionale, Fenerbahce and Wolfsburg.
Mark Warburton, former academy manager at Championship outfit, Watford, is the individual responsible for creating the NextGen Series, and he told the Daily Mail: “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.”
Warburton’s idea has been widely accepted to the point where City have opted to pull out of routine Reserve League fixtures, although the club still intend to compete in the Manchester and Lancashire Senior Cups next season. “We’ll be competing against the best in Europe, a la the Champions League format,’ said Mark Allen, academy director at Manchester City. “We see it as an important chapter in the development of Manchester City. The average age for a Premier League debut is becoming older, 21 or 22, when before it might have been 17 or 18. You have to bridge that gap and prepare them for a better standard of football.”
Allen’s enthusiasm for the competition has carried over from the City senior side’s impressive third placed finish in the Premier League and subsequent qualification for the Champions’ League. The club aim to maintain and accelerate their meteoric progression, and Allen sees the NextGen Series as an important way to condition the academy’s scholars for regular senior European action. “It’s the next stepping stone. It will prepare them for those balmy nights we’ll hopefully have in the Champions League as the club moves forward. Who knows, we might be seeing the new Lionel Messi on a Thursday night at Hyde.”
Considering the significant reduction in fixtures having pulled out of the Reserve League, it is not known what effect or how beneficial the decision will be on City’s youngsters, but as a concept, the NextGen Series should provide up-and-coming English talent with exactly what it intends to. Whether or not English teams can match their European opponents remains to be seen, but it can only serve to benefit their development as a whole.
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