Swansea City U21

The South Wales derby belongs to the first team, and the players who eventually contest it against Cardiff City tend to arrive by the same route: through Landore, where the under-21s play their home games at the training ground rather than at the 21,000-seat Swansea.com Stadium down the road.

The age group has been rebuilt around it twice inside a decade. The reserve side was scrapped in 2012 and replaced by an Under-21 team; from the 2016–17 season the squad moved up to Under-23 level in Premier League 2, and won the Division 2 title there. The Premier League Cup followed. Then, in 2020, a cut to the academy budget took the team out of Premier League 2 altogether and into the Professional Development League.

What the academy has kept is a production line that the Premier League still shops in. Ben Davies left for Tottenham Hotspur in 2014; Joe Rodon and Daniel James followed the same path out, both later at Leeds United, as did Connor Roberts, who went on to Burnley. For a club outside the top division, four graduates holding down that level at once is notable.

Anthony Wright took charge of the under-21s on 31 March 2023, working under academy manager Andy Goldie. The side plays in the white the senior team has worn since the club was founded as Swansea Town in 1912, with black trim; the name changed to Swansea City in 1970.

Joe Allen returned to the club in 2022, a decade after the academy first sent him up into the first team — the rare case of the pathway running in both directions.