Junior Champions League - could it be added?

First off, I did a search and found nothing - hopefully there are no other threads on this subject.

I'm hoping this will serve as both a feature suggestion and a general practicality discussion of the idea.

I'm not sure how well-known this is (I suspect very few people have heard about it) but there are stories doing the rounds at present that a number of top teams, including most of the Champions League-capable English sides, Barca, Real, AC, Inter, Sporting Lisbon and Ajax plus others are in negotiations for the creation of a closed shop Junior Champions League currently called the "New Generation League" which would (provisionally) have 16 of Europe's top youth academies playing each other regularly in order to get vital top-level match experience - the idea being that none of the teams mentioned believe that their national under-18 leagues provide a level of competition which really gives their youngsters an acceptable level of practice, and thus kids turn 18 and move up to the reserves totally unprepared for breaking into the first team squad. Their argument is that a "Champions League" of only the very best teams would have their kids fighting fit and capable of playing for the first team while still only in the youth set-up still.

For more info, you can read this article and there are others floating around the web (being a City fan I only know of the articles talking about City, but there may be others talking about the other teams if you look around):

http://menmedia.co.uk/manchestereveningnews/sport/football/manchester_city/s/1388281_city_help_to_pioneer_junior_champions_league

Now obviously if this came to fruition it would be great to have it in the game, but the second part of my point is, and this is partly for SI and anyone here who knows about FM's coding: can it actually be done? I would be interested though to also see a general straw poll of posters here on whether they want it to be added. Those of us who have read all the threads and understand how the game works know that at the moment, reserve and youth football in the game is a bit arbitrary and just bungs all the professional clubs' youth/reserve teams into one big competition with a load of groups and then a play-off (for England at least). I've seen threads about reserve teams being given their own status and being allowed to play in other tournaments and the answer is that you can't: their status is locked in and the only way to make teams for independent competitions is to make the reserve/youths as a seperate team and then tell the game that the main team is called "xxx Reserves" and put them in a competition with the name "Reserves" in the name. It is notable, for instance, that in FM11 the English reserve/u-18 leagues are not set up in the way their real-life equivalents are. Obviously therefore, a Junior Champions League would not be possible in the current incarnation of the game. So here is the question: just how hard would it be to change the game for FM12 (the earliest it could happen in real life anyway) to make an international youth league possible? Or would it just take so much extra work that it is not practical? Is there any way of adding this without much trouble? And do the posters here want to see this added?

Sounds like an interesting idea, im sure if it becomes part of real life football, SI will have to look at including it.

It might be possible to do it in FM, via the editor maybe. Haven't read closely, but will try it out tomorrow.

It might be possible to do it in FM, via the editor maybe. Haven't read closely, but will try it out tomorrow.

Thanks. As I say, I suspect it's not possible in FM11 unless you make a new team called "Man City Academy" etc, but honestly I never touch the editor so I'd be interested to hear your results.

Thanks. As I say, I suspect it's not possible in FM11 unless you make a new team called "Man City Academy" etc, but honestly I never touch the editor so I'd be interested to hear your results.

I am already working on a DB. I will try this when I am finished with that. Will keep you updated.

Don't expect miracles from me though.

Of course not. Anything you find out would be great.

When it actually happens, I'm sure SI will find a way to include it.

I already tried and I couldnt figure out a way to do it with the current under 18 teams. Of course I suck with the editor.

Yes it's possible in this version, but really hard to do...

Edit: There are already a few topics about this on the editor section.

Edit: There are already a few topics about this on the editor section.

My bad there. I didn't realise that it would be talked about there.

There are many things that can be improved when it comes to youth teams, RL Partizan Belgrade youth academy is one of the best in the world and the youngsters from Partizan are competing in different youth tournaments across Europe all the time, several youth tournaments in Italy and in Spain and there is a youth tournament in Belgrade where in the last couple of years Real Madrid youths, Fiorentina youths etc participated (and of course got beaten by our Partisan youngsters)

But there is nothing of the like in FM, there are no reoccurring youth tournaments,

Of course it could be done by creating tournaments yourself but it would clash with the regular season u-18 or u-21 matches and that is not good, it’s not good to let your youth players to play so many matches in such a short time. And there is no possibility to make a bigger tournament of, say... 8 teams divided in two groups or the like