Good afternoon everybody and welcome back to Carrow Road for today's match against Sheffield Wednesday.

Last week saw the Elite round of the UEFA European under-17 Championships take place with four of our current Academy players taking part in the competition representing various nations - Josh Dawkin for Wales, Dario Dumic for Denmark, Jed Steer (pictured top-right) and Sam Habergham for England.

The UEFA European under-17 Championship consists of three distinct stages; the qualifying round, the Elite round and the final round. The qualifying round, which was played in autumn, was made up of 13 groups of four teams playing in mini-tournaments. The top two from each group progress alongside the two third-placed teams with the best record against the top pair in their group, obviously all our player's nations made it through this stage of the tournament.

In the Elite round, those 28 qualifying nations competed in seven groups of four. The group winners joining the tournament hosts Germany in the finals in early May. Here they are split into two groups of four, with the top two progressing to the semi-finals and ultimately the final.

Dario and his Danish counterparts got their Elite stage off to a great start with a 4-0 win over Norway, though in their second match things took a turn for the worse for Dario. His team lost 2-1 to Belarus and Dario was sent off for two bookable offences, the second coming in injury time. This meant that Dario would miss Denmark's crucial last fixture against France, which they lost 1-0, ending any chance of qualification to the final round.

Josh Dawkin and the Welsh under-17s started with a 2-2 draw against Turkey, before they lost 3-0 against Finland, at the time of writing their final group game against Romania is still to be played but their chances of qualification are slim.

England on the other hand will be on their way to Germany for the finals in May, following three straight wins. Jed Steer started in goal for the first two matches, a 1-0 win over Portugal and a 2-1 win over Serbia. Sam Habergham, who received a late call-up for the competition, made his debut for the team coming off the bench in the game against Portugal. In the final qualifying game, Jed dropped to the bench and Sam was awarded with his first start for England in their 2-0 win over Hungary.

So England will travel to Germany for the final of the tournament which will take place between May 6 and 18. Hopefully both Jed and Sam will be selected to travel with the team and represent Norwich City in one of the world's most prestigious youth football tournaments.

Enjoy the game.

Ricky Martin
Academy Manager