Brief history of the competition

The UEFA Youth League was originally titled as the UEFA U-19 Champions League, during the two years of trial period of the competition and because of its format, completely equal to the Champions League competition system until the knockout phase (this phase has only single-leg ties, with the semi-finals and final played at neutral venues). This trial started in the season 2013/14 and in this season 2015/16 the competition has become bigger and opener, so 64 clubs, and not only the ones with the senior team in the Champions League, can enter the competition, as we explain in a pair of posts before. 

The origins of this competition are a bit polemical. The British media commented in the first year that this competition wasn’t created only with the laudable purposes that UEFA explains, according to British media, it was also created, or its main objective was, to "limit the growing influence of the NextGen Series* ". 

*The NextGen Series was basically another European football club competition for under-19 footballers founded in 2011. As the UEFA Youth League, it was designed to provide players with the opportunity to match themselves against other elite European footballers of their age group in a competitive environment. The competition was created by sports TV producer Justin Andrews, current Rangers manager Mark Warburton and current Brentford owner Matthew Benham.

And if that was another of the UEFA objectives, we have to recognize that they resulted very successful. The impact of the UEFA U-19 Champions League, even before the first year started, was so big that caused the immediately the suspension of the NextGen Series. On August 2013, organizers confirmed that the NextGen Series had been suspended for the 2013–14 campaign because of funding issues and lacking of competitive space since the creation of the now called UEFA Youth League. 

Before this decision, the NextGen Series organizers try a deal with UEFA with the objective of saving its competition, but were rejected by UEFA. The idea was that the participants of the NextGen Series were clubs that weren’t represented in the UEFA Youth League and the winner or the best performance academies could play in the next UEFA Youth League, basically transforming the NextGen Series in something similar to a qualification play-off. So, maybe the UEFA rejected the idea because was already thinking in implementing this new format of the two paths in the following years. Also they propose to run both leagues in tandem, and that the winners meet in a super-final, but UEFA also rejected.

Returning to the UEFA Youth League, this year the UEFA decide that the competition become a permanent UEFA competition. 

Since this year, the two UEFA Youth League finals have been these ones, both played in the Colovray Stadium of Nyon, Switzerland:

• 2013/14: FC Barcelona beating SL Benfica 3-0 (losing semi-finalist: Real Madrid and Schalke 04).

Munir El Haddadi with 11 goals and 5 assists in the tournament

• 2014/15: Chelsea FC beating Shakhtar Donetsk 3-2 (losing semi-finalist: AS Roma and RSC Anderlecht).

Dominic Solanke, with 12 goals and 4 assists in the tournament