saw the strikers v man city. strikers definitely were bigger/faster/stronger across the board than the man city players (looked like u14 playing u13), with the only exception being man city's right forward/striker. But, although tall, even he was clearly not as far along developmentally as the strikers players
assuming man city only had two 06s, one item that may have accounted for the delta is that almost 50% of the strikers players were born Jan to Mar 05. 100% speculation here, but have heard that the euro teams are much cognizant of rae at this age and also actively calc the likely final size of a player from parental data. so, maybe the man city was a squad of kids mostly from 2h or q4 05 that man city expects to grow later. at u14, even a six month delta is a big age difference.
to be fair though, from watching the match, strikers should have had a number of goals earlier in the game and, from watching other strikers' matches, they typically put way more of those opportunities in the back of the net. some of that was due good play by man city but some of it was definitely lack of finishing by the strikers
in the last 15-20 minutes or so though it looked like the strikers started to really tire out, started giving man city more room and, since man city looked like a very good technical team, that's when things turned.
