Youth Level

[Guest]

Do you attend? If so is it your local teams youth sides or are there academies near by that you go to? Who are the most fringe rising stars from it?

[Guest]

As for me, as some of you may know, I work for a youth club myself. A team who also competes in the Copa Peru. So I go every weekend and have to make reports on these players. Its been an adventure so far. Currently 4th in the table and hopefully some of these lads can go on to bigger teams in Peru when they are older and ambitiously go abroad.

How youth level works here, we have a cup called the Copa Federacion in Lima. How the structure works, its every weekend with 5 categories (this year its 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2003) and the team with the most accumulated points wins the whole thing. We have a lot of academies not in the first tier in Peru, it seems to be more of a thing here than elsewhere. Esther Grande Bentin is the best academy here and for the longest time, Academia Cantolao wasn't in the first division and was also a top academy. Regatas is also up there as one although I believe its more expensive than others. 

We also started a tournament called the Torneo Centenario which is U17 and U15 and they actually show these games on TV. I sometimes attend those too but mostly just Universitario. Basically the FPF is doing everything possible to change the youth format, which for the longest time hasn't really worked. We even created the U20 Libertadores and Universitario were the first winners of that competition in 2011, so things are getting better albeit very slowly.

The Copa Federacion is a thrilling competition. Awards are given out at the end of the year and everything. Players like Renato Tapia and I think Andre Carillo have been champions in their categories.