Barcelona make it three

There was a new format but familiar winners as Barcelona claimed a record third title to conclude the 2024/25 UEFA Youth League.

With the revamp of the UEFA Champions League, the junior competition followed suit. To continue to mirror the senior event in its UEFA Champions League path, the Youth League now had a 36-team league phase with the same line-up (though only using the first six matchdays' worth of fixtures rather than the full eight). Meanwhile the domestic champions path was expanded to three rounds with all associations invited rather than the 32 highest-raked, meaning that in all 88 clubs from 52 nations took part.

Inter starred in the league phase with six wins out of six (which had only been achieved three times in the old group stage and only in the inaugural 2013/14 and 2014/15 seasons). Real Madrid and Atlético de Madrid kept up their records of always making it to the post-Christmas phase but among the teams outside the top 22 that were eliminated were 2023/24 runners-up AC Milan.

Olympiacos had beaten Milan in the 2024 final after coming through the domestic champions path and did so again, as did the winners from the year before AZ Alkmaar, eliminating Manchester United at Old Trafford. Clubs from Estonia (Tallinna Kalev), Latvia (Daugavpils), Lithuania (Žalgiris), Luxembourg (Progrès Niederkorn), Malta (Valletta) and Montenegro (Budućnost Podgorica) became the first from their nations to get through a round (though none made it to the last 32).

The round of 32 replaced the old play-off round, mixing the 22 league phase qualifiers and ten domestic champions path winners. Trabzonspor knocked out Juventus to become the first Turkish team into the last 16 and then knocked out Atalanta and Inter, attracting a competition-record 40,368 crowd and totalling an unprecedented 66,404 total for their five home games.

Olympiacos made it to the quarter-finals but fell 1-0 at Salzburg, who along with Trabzonspor were joined in Nyon by AZ and Barcelona (making it for a record fifth time).

Trabzonspor were the only Nyon contenders not to have previously tasted victory, but in front of a fervent sell-out crowd, beat Salzburg 2-1 with a last-minute Boran Başkan goal not long after the 2016/17 champions had equalised. In the other semi-final, AZ's record 24-match competition unbeaten run (not counting penalty shoot-outs) was ended by Barcelona thanks to Juan Hernández's early spot-kick.

Barcelona had won their previous finals in 2014 and 2018, and proved too strong for Trabzonspor with a stylish 4-1 success to become the first three-time champions. Ibrahim Diarra and Andrés Cuenca had Barcelona 2-0 up within 19 minutes. Diarra provided the assist for Hugo Alba for the third before getting the fourth himself, with Bican Tibukoğlu pulling one back near the end for Trabzonspor.