Krasnodar U19

Cross the city and you land on the other side of a rivalry that runs deeper than any age group. The U19s won the club its first Youth Football League title in 2017/18.

The runners-up finish to CSKA in 2020/21 stung enough that the club went back and did it again, taking a second Youth League crown in 2022/23. Daniil Utkin, who had scored the winner in the 2018 final, belonged to that earlier generation rather than this one, but the pattern he set — academy players finishing games that matter — held. A third-place finish followed in 2023/24, and in 2025 it was Kazbek Mukailov's turn to top the scoring charts, with 19 goals.

None of it happens in isolation from the senior side. The first team's own rise, culminating in a maiden Russian championship in 2024/25, has raised the level every academy group has to match just to get a game. The venue names have shifted around them too — the club's own stadium dropped the Krasnodar name for Ozon Arena in 2025 — but the yardstick for the U19s stays fixed: two national titles in six years.