UEFA Under 21 Championship - a stage for future stars

Many players who eventually became top international football stars played at the UEFA European Under-21 Championship. Germans Rudi Voeller and Pierre Littbarski, who helped win the 1990 FIFA World Cup™ title; Frenchmen Eric Cantona and Zinedine Zidane, with the 1998 FIFA World Cup™ and UEFA European Champions 2000; Italians Alessandro Cannavaro, Andrea Pirlo and Francesco Totti, with the reigning 2006 World Cup™ title holders, all played in their respective national teams as under 21-year-olds. As did Englishman Frank Lampard, Portuguese Luis Figo and Spaniard Raul Gonzalez, plus many dozens of others who developed into the corps of the world’s best professionals. Daniele De Rossi, Andrea Barzagli, Cristian Zaccardo and Alberto Gilardino held the UEFA Champions Trophy in their hands at Bochum, Germany, on June 8, 2004, as part of the winning Italian UEFA Under-21 national team. Two years and two days later they also became FIFA World Cup™ champions with the “Azzurri” in Berlin.

A crowd of 20,400 spectators in St. Jakobs Stadium, Basle, came to know footballers such as goalkeeper Petr Cech and goalscorer Milan Baros for the first time on May 28, 2002. They won the final of the UEFA European Under-21 Championship with the Czech team against France. Soon afterwards they played with Premier League top teams Chelsea and Liverpool. Two years after the UEFA Under-21 European Championship 2002 professionals such as Cech and Baros, with Tomas Huebschmann, Martin Jiranek, David Rohzenal and Zdenek Grygera were with the Czech national team at the UEFA European football Championship™ in Portugal. With five goals, Milan Baros even became the top goalscorer among the 297 players who played in the event. Cech as well as Baros were elected to the All Star Team of the tournament.

The appearance of eventual star players in the finals for the Under-21 European crown is an ongoing theme of success. On June 4, 2000, Italy won the high level junior event by defeating the Czech Republic in Bratislava, Slovakia. Andrea Pirlo and Gennaro Gattuso, the two 2006 FIFA World Cup™ champions from AC Milan, were on that team. Four years previously when the Italians beat Spain in the final in Barcelona, three of the older 2006 FIFA World Cup™ champions were among the winning “Azzurri” juniors -- Alessandro Cannavaro, Alessandro Nesta and Francesco Totti.

France’s juniors triumphed in two finals, over Greece in 1988 with Eric Cantona and Laurent Blanc, a 1998 FIFA World Cup™ and 2000 European champion. Mark Hateley successfully helped defend England’s 1984 European junior title by defeating Germany in the final. Famous players such as Dirk Heyne and Rene Mueller were the goalkeepers with the GDR, as losing finalists in 1978 (to Yugoslavia) and 1980 (to the Soviet Union).

It is a dead certainty that new stars will appear on the football horizon at the UEFA European Under-21 Championship 2007. During the 2005 FIFA Junior World Cup in the Netherlands, a player with the winning Argentine team named Lionel Andres Messi attracted attention, with suggestions by many experts that he was the natural successor to Diego Maradona.