Mina Cup 2023: Teams, groups, and all you need to know

After a resounding success in 2022, the CBF Performance Education Management and under the patronage of Dubai Sports Council have come up with the second edition of the Mina Cup.

32 teams across the world, evenly spread across different age groups, are ready to battle it out for the ultimate glory in Dubai from March 31 to April 5.

Former England international, Teddy Sheringham, has been roped in as the Mina Cup ambassador. Excited to know more? GOAL tells you everything about the youth tournament including teams and groups.

What is Mina Cup?

The youth tournament draws its inspiration from the Northern Ireland Super Cup and the Gothia Cup in Sweden.

It's vision is to is to be considered as the world’s leading youth tournament, attracting top-class youth teams from each continent to compete for the Mina Cup.

State-of-the-art facilities ensure the young aspirational footballers get the taste of what a professional footballer lives week in week out especially on and before matchdays.

Ultra-edge technologies will be used to analyze their performance which will help them boost their understanding of how best to develop as footballers.

Which teams are playing in the 2023 Mina Cup?

Mina Cup brings together teams across U12, U14, U16 and U18 age groups. Several academy teams of some of the biggest football clubs in the world, including Barcelona, Crystal Palace, Southampton, are set to fight out among themselves for the ultimate prize.

They will be joined by UAE-based private academies that have secured a berth in the tournament by advancing from qualifiers held prior to the main event.

What is the Mina Cup format?

The Mina Cup draw for the main event was held on March 15.

After the draw eight teams of each age group were evenly split into two groups.

Winners of Group A will face runners-up from Group B and winners of Group B play runners-up from Group A in the semi-finals to decide the two finalists and the two sides that will battle it out for third place.

Teams that finish third and fourth in the two groups will play each other in a similar knockout format to decide places between fifth and eight, with third place in Group A facing fourth in Group B and vice versa.

What are the Mina Cup groups?

U-12 - Group A

U-12 - Group B

U-14 - Group A

U-14 - Group B

U-16 - Group A

U-16 - Group B

U-18 - Group A

U-18 - Group B