Everton’s youngsters could have been handed a ‘springboard’ to future success with their win in the U19 Champions Trophy.
That’s according to Lubeck Nachrichten, who cover the tournament today and how it’s propelled several big stars to success over the years.
Leighton Baines’ side were crowned champions of the tournament in Germany over the Easter holidays, with a win on penalties in the final seeing them come away as victors after only entering the tournament at the last minute.
There’s been plenty of positive reviews of them and the tournament as a whole since, with academy director Chris Adamson praising the organisation today before heading back to England with the team.
For example, Uwe Kamps took part as an U19 player for BV 04 before then starting in goal for Borussia Mönchengladbach while Bastian Schweinsteiger, Philipp Lahm and Thomas Müller also auditioned at Hans-Böckler-Straße before later becoming German champions with Bayern and World Cup winners with Germany.
They’re just an example of some of the players who’ve made names for themselves, and the newspaper insists the list of stars who’ve made their way into scouts notepads at the tournament is a long one.
Whether any from the Everton squad can enjoy a similar rise remains to be seen but given youngster Martin Sherif was the man picked out for praise yesterday, he’s the obvious name to keep an eye on moving forwards.
We’re sure he’d be happy with even half of the career of the aforementioned trio, who aren’t bad examples to follow in the slightest.
For now, his focus is surely on making it into Everton’s team and perhaps proving Sean Dyche’s assessment that there is no young talent at Goodison Park very wrong indeed.