Santos U20

Long before anyone signs a professional contract at Vila Belmiro, they pass through Santos's youth ranks, built to keep feeding the first team with its own players rather than relying only on the market. The Sub-20 side sits at the top of that structure, carrying the black-and-white colours of a club founded in 1912 in the port city of Santos, São Paulo state, without a birth date of its own — it exists because the senior team needs it to.

That pipeline is why the academy's reputation rests less on the Sub-20 side's own results than on who came out of it: Pelé, Neymar, Robinho, Paulo Henrique Ganso, Diego, Elano and Philippe Coutinho all wore the shirt before they wore any other. The Sub-20 team itself has won the Campeonato Paulista in the category twice, in 2012 against São Paulo and again in 2025, when the same opponent forced a 3-3 draw before Santos won it on penalties.

Official matches are played at Vila Belmiro, listed at 20,360 seats, though day-to-day work happens at the CT Rei Pelé training ground. The 2025/26 home kit broke from tradition, arriving from Umbro in plain white rather than the usual black and white split. Rivalries with Palmeiras, Corinthians and Flamengo's own Sub-20 sides run through the same Paulista and national youth competitions.

In the 2025 squad, the captain's armband went to João Ananias, but the name that drew attention belonged further forward: Robinho Jr., a striker in the side and the son of Robinho, who came through this same academy two decades earlier.