Werder Bremen U19

The academy sits inside the same organisation that the senior side does — no separate club, no separate badge, just the youth department of a football club that has carried green and white since 4 February 1899 . The U19s take the training ground at the Sportpark Weserstadion, mostly Platz 11, where 5,500 can watch a match played a few hundred metres from the stadium the graduates are meant to end up in.

For a long stretch the department's one national honour was the A-Junioren championship of 1998/99, won by beating VfB Stuttgart 4-1 in the final. It came in the middle of a decade of near misses: Borussia Dortmund had taken the 1993/94 final, Bayer Leverkusen the one in 1999/2000. Three finals in seven seasons, one trophy.

What the academy is judged on in Bremen is not the trophy count. Niclas Füllkrug came through it, as did Romano Schmid and Johannes Eggestein; the route from Platz 11 to the first team is the argument for the whole department, and it is the argument the club makes on its own site.

The team plays in the A-Junioren Bundesliga Nord/Nordost, which puts Hamburger SV on the fixture list twice a season. The Nordderby is inherited from the seniors rather than invented here, and the age group treats it accordingly.

The immediate task is holding the level the cup win set: another season in the northern division, another set of players pushed towards the professional squad.