Their failures allowed unfancied Manchester City, Fenerbahce, Torino and Cruzeiro to progress, although all four went out in the first Shield knockout round. Southampton, ranked 48th, did well to get through to Round 3, while Villarreal did even better - ranked 57th, they made it to Round 4. Best of the bunch, though are David Senior's juniors, with his 46th seeded Sevilla side through to the semi-finals.
2nd Round (first knockout round)
Matches played on Saturday 18 November
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* After Fictional Extra Time (AFET)
+ Fener played overage team
Round 2 went more or less as expected. The biggest shocks were Standard Liege's 5-0 thrashing of a hugely disappointing Chelsea side, and 39th seeded Dynamo Kiev's surprise win at fancied Swansea (seeded 23).
34th seeds Newcastle also put in a storming performance to nick a 4-3 win at 26-ranked Sassuolo.
3rd Round (second knockout round)
Matches played on Saturday 25 November (Note: losers from Round 2 of Youth Cup all got home ties).
* AFET
+ Atletico and Dortmund played overage teams.
The third round was a round of upsets with only Liverpool, Napoli and Liege winning as expected.
Augsburg boss Ivan Inic was understandably upset to lose at home to a team 33 places below his in the seedings.
Lokomotiv gaffer Jay Jones, on the other hand, was delighted:
Atletico manager Doc seemed to blame his players:
Newcastle continued where they left off in Round 2, winning away in extra time against a much stronger team:
Sevilla dumped out 30th seeds Wolfsburg, while result of the night was undoubtedly Sporting's win in Dortmund:
Quarter Finals
Matches played on Saturday 2 and 9 December, and Wednesday 6 December.
Confusion reigned at Youth Cup HQ prior to the quarter final draw. Rounds 2 and 3 were pre-seeded, but the QFs were always supposed to be a random draw. Since his team's defeat to Juve in the Youth Cup 3rd Round, however, Youth Cup supremo Beddows hadn't been seen anywhere, and rumours were rife he was too busy drowning his sorrows in Big Barbs' warm embrace.
Finally, Beddows answered a desperate text message with the words 'FRANK GIVES ME THE 69s'. Now, there was no way I was going to Top 100 Capo Frank to ask him to give me a 69. I was sober, Beddows was likely drunk, and did he even have control of his phone? Was that Big Barbs' broken English? Plus, I knew Frank was busy adding to his own youth team. Anyway, after some dillying and dallying, we did the draw the old-fashioned way by pulling numbered balls out of bag, and made a complete hash of it.
* AFET
Sevilla continued their amazing adventure knocking out the much-improved Liege after extra time in the QFs.
Underdogs Newcastle and Villarreal's superb Youth Cup and Shield campaigns ended at Flamengo and Napoli, while Sporting continued their fantastic run with a win at 25th seeds Liverpool.
Semi Finals
That all set up the semi-final draw as follows:
First leg ties to be played on Saturday 16 December, with the reverse fixtures of the second legs to be played on Wednesday 20 December.
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