I've caught the odd half hour of this U19 shadow of the Champions League on the tv. There's hardly an English player in the teams of the big English clubs. They are mainly 18 year olds poached from other clubs around Europe and beyond. The football is slow, backwards and sideways, possession based stuff. Lots of diving and playing for free kicks and penalties on the one hand and cynical fouling on the other. Perhaps naively I expected it to be refreshing to watch but its actually thoroughly depressing.
I've not seen it Smiler but yeah I think we can all imagine how utterly yaaawn it was. It's the coaching philosophy the world over now, unfortunately everone has looked at what Spain did and tried to construct their own version of it. And I'm sorry to say it, but its how I coach my 20 or so U13s, possession based football. Kind of have to - it's the way the game is played for them, you just have to watch old 90s Sky re runs to see how spoiled we were, and World Cups where different flavours would all come together - now Nigeria play like Columbia play like Japan play like France....it is such a dour game now and I can't see it changing anytime soon.