Borussia M'bach U19

The Jung-Fohlen spend their season in the DFB-Nachwuchsliga, the national under-19 competition.

Three times they have reached the final of the DFB-Pokal der Junioren. The first two came back to back, in 1987 and 1988, and on both occasions the team standing in front of them was 1. FC Nürnberg. In 2008, Bayer 04 Leverkusen finished the job.

Home is the Fohlenplatz, listed on the training complex as Platz 10 — a pitch inside the Borussia-Park grounds holding around 3,000, which is a different world from the 54,057 the first team plays in a few hundred metres away. That proximity is the point of the Fohlen-Akademie: the under-19s train where the senior squad trains.

What the academy is judged on is who comes out of it. Marc-André ter Stegen went from these pitches to a goalkeeping career at the top of the European game, and Christoph Kramer, Tony Jantschke and Patrick Herrmann all came through before making long careers in the black, white and green. More recently Rocco Reitz has followed the same route.

The fixture that matters most is 1. FC Köln — the Rheinderby, played out at youth level with the same edge as above it, where the table goes out of the window. Borussia Dortmund and Fortuna Düsseldorf come after that, the first for what is usually at stake in the league, the second because Düsseldorf is close enough that the players know each other.