Fabio Capello has just resigned as England manager, but I must concentrate on writing this article, which is an update on how the NextGen Series has been going since I first wrote about it in the MK Dons programme back at the start of September. The inaugural competition this season being a new European football club cup for under-19 footballers in which 16 clubs started off in group stage format then went into a knockout phase which has now reached the semi-final stage.
So, 12 clubs have fallen by the wayside, they being Aston Villa, Basel, Celtic, Fenerbahce, Manchester City, Molde, PSV Eindhoven, Rosenborg, Sporting Lisbon, Tottenham Hotspur, Wolfsburg and Barcelona, who just now have gone down 3-0 at home to Ajax in the Mini Estadi. I did actually, for research purposes only, try to watch some of that quarter-final match as it was being streamed, via YouTube, on both Barcelona’s official website and the NextGen website.
Believe me, it wasn’t successful, the feed kept buffering and infact at times managed to go back in time as it restarted itself, Ajax a couple of times going from 2-0 up to 1-0 up as the game went backwards, maybe that is something we could introduce in live football? With Barcelona’s first team at home to Valencia in the second leg of their Copa del Rey semi-final encounter just half an hour after the end of the Ajax game though, I am also going to attempt to introduce some mitigating circumstances for the poor attendance at the Mini Estadi.
Having said that, the stadium is slap bang next to Camp Nou and holds just over 15,000 spectators, and with three sides of the ground closed I would guesstimate the crowd to have been around the 1,000 mark, maybe even fewer than that. The competition not having really caught on in this country either seemingly as far as spectator interest is concerned, with Manchester City, playing at Hyde’s salubrious Ewen Fields and having attendances of 551 and 825 against Marseille and Celtic respectively, although they did manage to draw 2,067 for their first game against big name Barcelona.
Other clubs not involved this season though have shown an interest with Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal, Bayern Munich and Real Madrid all expected to join up if the plan to expand to 24 teams goes ahead. The concern of course in that respect being that it will end up even more centred to the top clubs than the Champions League is at present, with entry to the NextGen Series at the moment being on an invitation-only basis, a rather worrying precedent you might think.
One small precedent does seem to have been set as far as the other rules are concerned though after Tottenham defeated Liverpool 1-0 in a White Hart Lane quarter-final earlier this month, even that game only attended by around 3,000 spectators. Liverpool however back in the competition just two days later when Spurs withdrew, their Director of Football Administration, Darren Eales coming out with the following somewhat vague statement: “It is with regret that we have decided to withdraw from the semi- finals of the NextGen Tournament due to an accidental breach of a competition regulation. We have done so fully respecting the Tournament regulations.”
As far as the three other British participants were concerned, well, things couldn’t have gone any worse for Manchester City who, in an admittedly tough Group One containing the two teams that eventually qualified through in Barcelona and Marseille, lost six out of six matches. Two of those defeats however coming against Celtic, 4-2 at home and 2-1 away, the only other victory for the Hoops who won three and lost three being a 3-0 success at home to Marseille.
Aston Villa meanwhile won four and lost two in Group Three to come top of their table, only to go down 2-1 after extra-time at home to Marseille in the quarter-finals. Marseille therefore now go on to play Inter Milan in semi-final one while the reinstated Liverpool face slight surprise package Ajax in semi-final two, with the venues to find a winner from now on in remarkably still yet to be decided.
The idea of it all of course is to bring under-19 players through for the future at their clubs, although one player could be making it sooner than forecast. The top scorer in the competition at the moment with seven goals on the table and just three games left being 16-year old Barcelona starlet Jean-Marie Dongou (pictured), the Cameroon-born striker having last month made his B team debut in the Spanish Second Division. He’s the latest one to watch certainly.