FEATURE | PSG youth team in great shape as they meet Real Madrid in tonight’s Youth League semi-final | OneFootball

While Paris Saint-Germain’s first team look forward to their Champions League semi-final against Bayern Munich in ten days’ time, the PSG youth team will make their own final four appearance tonight, in the Youth League.

PSG’s Espoirs, most of whom were born in 2007-2008, face Real Madrid tonight in Lausanne, for a place in the final on Monday, where they would meet the winner of the other semi-final which pits Benfica against Club Bruges.

PSG will look to emulate, and then better, the 2016 team which reached the final, where they lost to Chelsea.

Their route to the final four has been impressive, losing just once – to Barcelona – in the group stage, defeating Bayern Munich 3-0 and scoring five against both Atalanta and Tottenham Hotspur, before moving on to the final phase where they dispatched Dinamo Minsk 4-0, HJK Helsinki 6-1 and Villarreal 1-0. Top scorers, with five goals apiece, are right-sided forward Adam Ayari and centre-forward Pierre Mounguengue (both 18). The team’s full-backs give an indication of the breadth of age in the team, left-back and captain Thomas Cordier a relative veteran at 20, while right-back David Boly has only recently turned 17.

Coach Jean-François Vulliez, who previously worked in the youth set-up at Olympique Lyonnais, where he helped develop the likes of Bradley Barcola, has such a wealth of talent to choose from that it is likely that midfielder Mathis Jangeal – who has appeared for the PSG first team this season – will start on the bench.

Many of the Youth League squad are also eligible to play in PSG’s U18 Coupe Gambardella team, which has also reached the semi-final stage, and with the club’s U17 and U19 teams in the top two in their respective leagues, it is evidence that the club’s Campus de Poissy training complex, inaugurated in 2024, is helping to develop a large number of promising footballers – 28 of whom have featured in the Youth League this season.

PSG has a strong recent history of helping to nurture generational talents, the club ranking in the CIES Football Observatory’s top 5 for clubs who have developed the most players to feature in the five big European leagues over the past decade.

The recurring issue is how many of those players have been able to break permanently into the PSG first team. The 2016 Youth League finalists featured the likes of Christopher Nkunku, Jean-Kevin Augustin, Jonathan Ikone and Fodé Ballo-Touré, all of whom moved elsewhere in order to guarantee more playing time.

Although Luis Enrique has shown himself more open than some of his predecessors to giving youth a chance, many of the current team are likely to move away this summer according to L’Équipe, including Ayari (linked with Ajax Amsterdam), Cordier and Jangeal.

GFFN | Jeremy Smith