Coventry City U21

In 1987 Coventry City's youth side beat Charlton Athletic over two legs in the FA Youth Cup final, Steve Livingstone settling it with a goal in extra time. It remains the only time the club's young players have lifted that trophy, though they had already been there twice before, in 1968 and 1970, and would return twice more in 1999 and 2000, losing all four to Burnley, Tottenham Hotspur and, in both later finals, Arsenal.

The current U21 side carries that history forward without a founding date of its own. It grew out of the academy structure that has run beneath Coventry City since Singers F.C. was formed by workers at the Singer Cycle Company in 1883, and took its present shape in 2012, when the Professional Development League replaced the old Reserve Premier League. The team trains and plays out of the Alan Higgs Centre, away from the first team's ground, on 3G pitches outdoors and a 4G dome when the weather turns.

What the age-group system has produced matters more than where it plays. Callum Wilson and James Maddison both came through Coventry's ranks before moving on to Premier League careers, and the list runs on through Gary McSheffrey, Cyrus Christie and Conor Thomas among others who started in the same colours, sky blue shirts and white shorts, as the first team above them.

Matches against Leicester City's development squad carry the weight of the M69 Derby, the rivalry named for the motorway joining the two cities, and Birmingham City provide a second, looser local edge. Silverware at this level has been harder to come by lately: since that 1987 Youth Cup win, and despite four further finals, the club has not added to it, and its record in the Premier League Cup and the current Professional Development League still shows no title.