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UEFA has been running a "Youth League" tournament in parallel with its Champions League for four years now. In the last two seasons, the competition has been expanded from 32 teams to 64, and it is in those two years that RB Salzburg has gained entry to the tournament.
Last season, Salzburg's U-19 squad was bounced by Roma in the final round of qualifying for the knockout stages for teams entering via the "Domestic Champions path" (the other route is the "Champions League path" - in which the youth teams of all 32 UEFA Champions League clubs play an identical group stage to that of their first teams).
This season, however, Salzburg has been the revelation of the tournament. Again on the Domestic Champions path, the team won through two qualifying rounds as it had the year before. In the final qualifying round, it edged Manchester City's academy team on penalties. In the round of 16, Salzburg's U-19s thrashed Paris Saint-Germain (last season's losing finalist) 5-0. In the quarterfinals, the team beat Atletico Madrid, 2-1.
Now Salzburg is in the semifinals, facing one of the most admired academy programs in the world: that of FC Barcelona.
Barcelona won the inaugural edition of this tournament in the 2013-14 season, but hasn't been back to even the semifinals since (Anderlecht's academy team has bested Barcelona in the knockout rounds for the last two seasons).
Now Barcelona is back at the business end of the competition with a point to prove. And Salzburg's upstart squad will seek to demonstrate the methods of Red Bull Global Soccer extend beyond merely poaching the best world's young players to an academy system the equal of any in Europe.
Per uefa.com, the match will be live streamed on the federation's website in markets where TV rights are unsold (which includes the USA).