SCOUTED XI: Our UEFA U-17 EURO Team of the Tournament

That’s that. 31 games crammed into 17 days in Cyprus and Italy are champions.

It’s becoming a little bit of a trend now. After their senior men’s team became champions of Europe in 2021, they’ve added to their trophy collection by winning the most recent editions of both the U-19 and now U-17 European Champonships. Throw in their FIFA U-20 World Cup final appearance in 2023 and you can start to piece together a tidy little generation of Italian players coming to the fore.

You can certainly say that about this crop. Headlined by AC Milan prodigy Francesco Camarda, the Italians dominated their group, did the habitual penalty shoot-out win over England in the quarter-finals, smothered Denmark in the semis, then put on a show against Portugal to lift the trophy.

This is the first time Italy have won the UEFA U-17 EURO (both men’s and women’s) in their history, having lost in finals in 2013, 2018 and 2019.

These tournaments continue to get more and more competitive year on year. Playing in really difficult, hot and humid conditions in Cyprus, these games were often run out at a surprisingly high pace, especially as we moved into the knockouts. It goes to show how physically prepared these youngsters are.

These weren’t quite 2023 U-17 World Cup in Indonesia conditions, but they weren’t that far off, and the instances of cramping were far less pronounced — apart from one slightly humorous moment when Spanish goalkeeper Manu González had to be subbed out with cramp after 70 minutes in their opener.

Above all, what really stood out was the level of number nine play we saw. It was a dynamic cast, with a few of them looking like potential elite-level game-breakers, showing all the characteristics of the type of striker that every big European club is chasing.

Come back to read these once you’re done with this…

• Here we go: UEFA U-17 EURO, Matchday 1 round-up
• The New Messi: UEFA U-17 EURO, Matchday 2 round-up
• Big Project Nine: UEFA U-17 EURO, Matchday 3 round-up

It’s worth keeping tabs on a couple of nations too. Serbia continue to excel in this tournament, cobbling together an exciting crop of players for two years in a row now, with a few really high potential players amongst them.

The Czech Republic also shone at this tournament, and although I couldn’t squeeze any of their players into this TOTT, they probably had four or five players that were right on the edge — and we covered those extensively in our group stage round-ups.

But for now, Italy are champions. And with that, here’s SCOUTED’s 2024 UEFA U-17 EURO Team of the Tournament, curated by Stephen Ganavas.