Opinion

Before he was scoring the extra-time winner of the 2010 South Africa final, Andrés Iniesta was improvising a scooped finish from outside the box against Uzbekistan in the 2003 Under-20 World Cup.

Two years later, a future Barcelona teammate of Iniesta’s — one Lionel Messi — was whipping the ball inside the near post in a showdown with Brazil. Iniesta, Messi and Xavi, another U-20 World Cup star, would win the Champions League together the following spring.

And before anyone really knew about FIFA’s biennial youth championship, Diego Maradona was drilling a low free kick into the back of the net against the Soviet Union in the 1979 final.

Everyone knew about it after that.

Ever since, the U-20 has been a platform from which future superstars are launched. There was Marco van Ba

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