Drama and karma: UEFA Youth League, Matchday 2

As the days get colder and the nights draw in, we slip further and further into the warm embrace of the UEFA Youth League.

Thankfully, this season’s schedule is much less intense than the non-stop action of last season’s. MD1 was all of two weeks ago now. In case you’ve forgotten or even missed what happened in the opening round of games, we have you covered.

Introducing Francesco Camarda: UEFA Youth League, Matchday 1

The UEFA Youth League is back! Europe’s premier club youth competition returns for another season, fresh off a campaign that fostered exciting underdog stories for probably the first time in its decade-long history. AZ Alkmaar won it all, if you remember. They went all the way through the Domestic Champions pathway, beating the likes of Barcelona, Real Madrid and Sporting CP en route to the final. There they met Hajduk Split, another bolter that managed to defeat Manchester City, Borussia Dortmund and AC Milan to get there. Absolutely nobody could have foreseen that final this time last year - and that’s why youth football is fun.

SCOUTED NotebookLlew Davies

Even though it’s increasingly difficult to actually watch games - see our little rant, and Wyscout can piss off for pricing almost everyone out of it too - we still managed to watch a lot of them between us. We could only focus on the group stage though, missing out on the concurrent Champions Pathway which also kicked off this week.

Seven teams - FC København, Lens, Braga, Real Madrid, Feyenoord, AC Milan and Barcelona - maintained their 100% records all in all, making it two wins from two. They’re all good value to progress out of their respective groups, and about five, maybe six, of them should be seen as genuine contenders.

But what happened and who impressed? You can find out below…