Cause for concern at what's coming through in the levels below the current Welsh team?

[the other bob wilson]

If you read the FAW Twitter feed, it sounds like the Wales Under 21 side absolutely battered their opponents yesterday, but could not make their superiority count and had to settle for a 1-1 draw. Fair enough, these sort of things happen, but, when you delve a bit deeper, you see that we were playing Luxembourg at home and needed an equaliser in the last ten minutes to avoid defeat - Luxembourg also missed a penalty.

This disappointing result, which means an end to Welsh hopes of progressing in the European Under 21 Championships, follows on the back of Friday's 4-0 thumping by Denmark at Wrexham.

Yesterday also saw the Welsh Under 19 team draw 0-0 with Iceland in the second of the couple of matches played with Iceland at Newport over the international break - the first game was lost 2-1.

A couple of weeks ago, Wales' Under 17s played Hungary in another dual international session in Newport and lost the first one 2-1, before drawing the second 1-1.

So, six home matches played since this season started against a variety of opponents who would not be described as being among the world's elite and an underwhelming record of three draws and three defeats. Only two of the matches had any points riding on them and I know youth football is more about the individual players it produces, rather than the trophies that are won, but could it be said that the current feelgood factor in Welsh football does not extend beyond the senior team?

[*** G L O V E S ***]

A massively disappointing results on the face of it, although those in attendance say we really did dominate the match.

Regardless, prior to last night Luxembourg had won one of their last 26 games, losing 23 of those. It was also three years ago to the day that we lost to San Marino at that age level - still their only win in a decade!

[Zenith]

There are definitely exciting individuals mind. Ethan Ampadu at Exeter, Woodburn at Liverpool, Matondo at Man City, Bird at Cardiff, Abbruzzee also at Cardiff etc

[Majorblue]

There are definitely exciting individuals mind. Ethan Ampadu at Exeter, Woodburn at Liverpool, Matondo at Man City, Bird at Cardiff, Abbruzzee also at Cardiff etc

Let's be honest here, throughout the ages there have been players who at schools/ youth level have looked a cut above yet never fulfill or even get close to being the player that they could have been.

What is of concern is that with all the money being pumped into academies and the like the stand out players are not exactly coming through at a rate any better than the days of the often mocked apprenticeship/ YTS schemes of decades ago.

[Zenith]

Let's be honest here, throughout the ages there have been players who at schools/ youth level have looked a cut above yet never fulfill or even get close to being the player that they could have been.

What is of concern is that with all the money being pumped into academies and the like the stand out players are not exactly coming through at a rate any better than the days of the often mocked apprenticeship/ YTS schemes of decades ago.

Ampadu really does look like the real thing mind at Exeter, I am 99% sure he will stick with Wales too. Woodburn looked very good for Liverpool in pre season, a lot better than Harry Wilson looked at the same age.

There could be a 15/16 year old with bags of talent who nobody really knows about yet. We will soon start to see if we can maintain this great Wales team after the 2018 World Cup as we'll start to have gaps and ageing pros in our team. Collins and Williams will be approaching retirement, around the age of 35 and 34 respectively. Our players inc. as Hennessey, Fon Williams, Edwards, Ledley, Cotterill etc. Will all be over the age of 30 so hopefully we will start seeing some 18 and 19 year olds get introduced into our squads instead of players like Shaun MacDonald and Church, who offer nothing to the team. You could possibly argue a case for Church.

[TruBlue]

It was only about 2 years ago the senior team struggled to beat Andorra, so there is still hope.

[qccfc]

Does it really matter if we have a great youth squads. The only decent one i can remember was the one that Rambo and Bale were in at the same time, even then they didnt qualify for tournaments.

The Wales team is made up around 60/40 of Welsh based players and English heritage players, by the nature of the beast players like Ashley Williams and James Chester don't play for the youth teams, and others like HRK play a few times for the youth when the swap allegiances. As long as there is still a heritage focus on Wales these players will come through regardless.

With regards to the Welsh born players, as long as individuals are being produced, it doesn't really matter how strong the teams at this level are. As due to the limited numbers that a country like Wales is a player will be brought out of the u21 and into the main squad much earlier than teams with a larger group of players.

the youth set-up in Wales are more about adding experience rather than winning games.

[surge]

There can be many different perspectives on this week:

i) while the twitter feed suggests we deserved 3 points there is a post on Apostles (perhaps reactionary) that suggests otherwise

ii) While a disappointing result that ended our hopes of qualification the result that really did that was a thumping a couple of days before. To have the mental strength to come back from such a thumping, to keep going when things aren't going your way in what is another disappointing result and to still come away with something is quite a good sign.

iii) Iceland were praised for their youth development over the summer so competing with them may not be a bad thing

I'm a little surprised given you watching youth football so frequently that you are happy to question the feel good factor at that level, although I suspect it was just partially to ensure this thread got a response. What is a concern to me is how we couldn't capitalise and qualify for the next stages of the youth tournaments despite the good work being done at youth level and that has to be the next challenge.

[Arfur Europe]

There are definitely exciting individuals mind. Ethan Ampadu at Exeter, Woodburn at Liverpool, Matondo at Man City, Bird at Cardiff, Abbruzzee also at Cardiff etc

Matondo could yet play for the dark side :-( Although I understand that the Welsh coaches have done everything they can to lure him to stay in the red of mighty Wales

(who are above the dark side in the FIFA World Rankings and got a full two rounds further than they did in the Euros) :hehe:

[Bluebird since 1948]

As a small country it doesn't really matter what happens below the senior side. We only need 3 or 4 good players per age grade to have a competitive side in the future. It's unrealistic to suggest we are going to have good sides for every age, we just don't have the player pool.

The way to go for Wales and other countries with under 5m people is to get a first 16 worthy of challenging at major tournaments which is what we have now. It does mean that injuries and suspensions hit us hard but that's the nature of the beast.

[the other bob wilson]

There can be many different perspectives on this week:

i) while the twitter feed suggests we deserved 3 points there is a post on Apostles (perhaps reactionary) that suggests otherwise

ii) While a disappointing result that ended our hopes of qualification the result that really did that was a thumping a couple of days before. To have the mental strength to come back from such a thumping, to keep going when things aren't going your way in what is another disappointing result and to still come away with something is quite a good sign.

iii) Iceland were praised for their youth development over the summer so competing with them may not be a bad thing

I'm a little surprised given you watching youth football so frequently that you are happy to question the feel good factor at that level, although I suspect it was just partially to ensure this thread got a response. What is a concern to me is how we couldn't capitalise and qualify for the next stages of the youth tournaments despite the good work being done at youth level and that has to be the next challenge.

My use of a question mark in the thread title shows I was putting something out for discussion and I did say that youth football was more about producing good quality players than a team winning trophies (not sure that's so true when you get to Under 21 level mind).

Truth is that Wales have little in their footballing history which says that should prosper at all age levels as well as in the seniors. The records show that we've only ever enjoyed any measurable success once at Under 21 level and that was when we qualified for that Play Off with England in 2009 - tellingly, there are a few members of that side who are important parts of the current senior side which has to be a very strong contender to be Wales' best ever team.

So, there is some evidence which shows that a strong age group team which enjoys some sort of success in the trophy department can be of a benefit to the senior team somewhere down the line. Similarly, the Under 16's became only the second Welsh team to ever win the Home International Victory Shield with a 100% record in 2014 and they retained their title last year (albeit in a remodeled competition which no longer featured England), so, set against what has been the norm for Welsh teams in this age group, that would appear to indicate that we had a better than normal group coming through.

I would have expected that some of those Victory Shield winning squads would be involved with the Under 17s now (and maybe even the Under 19s in some cases - e.g. Tyler Roberts, currently on loan at Oxford where he is a regular selection on the bench for league matches and a scorer for them when he started a match in that new Cup competition last week) and, given the good things being said about the Welsh set up currently, I think it was reasonable to expect a better set of results than we got.

Certainly beforehand, I think any supporter who follows youth football at club and country level would have been disappointed if they had been told that these six matches would end up as they did.

Apart from Luxembourg, I would say that there have been times when all of the teams we played have been stronger than us, but I'd argue that an identical set of fixtures played over such a range of age levels would usually produce a better set of results for us than they did this time.

I was disappointed and surprised by how poorly we did and, while I'm certainly not saying there is a crisis in Welsh football at youth level, I believe there is a discussion to be had about why we didn't do better (and also, why there were so few City players making it into the starting line ups that I've seen for the Under 21 and Under 19 matches).

[Jimmy the Jock]

I blame brexit myself.

[Vindec]

I blame brexit myself.

Does that mean the Scots will SEXIT?

[G rangetown Blue]

I wouldn't worry too much. There's bound to be 4 or 5 Englishmen who can't get into their team, so we can just 'find' them a Welsh grandparent and they can come play for us.
They can even be our captain if they want, we don't care.