Vojvodina U19

Two Yugoslav First League titles, in 1966 and 1989, sit at the top of what the youth academy in Novi Sad measures itself against, and the U19 side has managed its own version of that standard: the Omladinska liga Srbije, Serbia's national youth championship, in the 2011/12 season.

The academy behind that title, known simply as the Omladinska škola, has sent players through to the first team and beyond who went on to define themselves elsewhere — Dušan Tadić and Sergej Milinković-Savić among them. Gojko Kačar took a different route: capped for the senior side as a player, he now coaches the U19 team he once came through himself.

Unlike the first team, which fills Stadion Karađorđe, the U19 group trains and plays at the Vujadin Boškov complex in Veternik, a ground built for 1,200 rather than the near 15,000 the senior side can draw. It carries the club's colours regardless — red and white — and the same nicknames, Voša chief among them, a name that travels down through every age group at the club.

The senior honours list runs further back, to a Mitropa Cup and a UEFA Intertoto Cup won in successive years in the 1970s, but the pattern set there — patient development through the ranks rather than a purchased shortcut — is the one the U19 side is built to continue. Kačar's group now carries that project forward, with the Omladinska škola's production line still the measure of whether it is working.