UEFA Youth League final, today 5pm

For anyone interested, the UEFA Youth League final kicks off at 5pm today, pitting Spain's FC Barcelona against Trabzonspor, of Turkey.

Path through the main bracket:

Trabzonspor:
Juve (1-0), Atalanta (0-0 & pens), Inter (1-0) and RB Salzburg (2-1)

Barcelona:
D Zagreb (2-2 & pens), A Villa (3-1), Stuttgart (2-1) and AZ Alkmaar* (1-0)


(*2023 champions AZ Alkmaar had previously knocked out Man Utd (in the domestic champions' path), Benfica, R Madrid and Man City.)

Barcelona are bidding to become the first team to lift the trophy 3 times, having won in the inaugural 2014 edition, and again in 2018.

Chelsea are the only other 2-time winners, but after winning in 2015 and 2016, lost both the 2018 and 2019 finals.

The next best performance by an English side in this competition was Man City's lone semifinal appearance in 2018.

Benfica is the only other side to have reached 4 finals, losing the first three and having finally lifted the trophy -and who knows if the curse of Béla Guttmann curse- in 2022.

Reigning champions Olympiacos went out in the quarter finals to 2017 champions and 2022 finalists, RB Salzburg, while last year's runners-up AC Milan failed to make it out of the CL League table phase.


About the format:

The competition format provides two different paths to the main knockout bracket:

One, the Champions League path, provides entry to the youth clubs of the sides that have qualified for that season's CL league (formerly group) stage. It follows the same league table format as the Champions League.

The other is the Domestic Champions' path. It consists of three rounds of direct two-leg, home-and-away knockoust featuring the champions of each of the 52 UEFA associations, or the runners-up if the champions have qualified through the CL path. The top 26 leagues per UEFA coefficient get a bye in the first round.

The main bracket is single-leg knockout from start to finish, with only the first ko round (R32) being seeded to give the top 6 league teams and top 10 domestic champions apart.

After that it's unseeded single-leg knockouts, with the home team decided by the draw.

Both semis and the final are played in Nyon, Switzerland.