Which is a shame, as Arsenal's Youths capped another terrific season today by adding the trophy to the FA Youth Cup won last week.

See here for story of the knockout stage. Here's the story of the knock-out stages...

In the Quarter & SemiFinals, the format was: 7 minutes each way, then 4 minutes each way of golden-goal extra time with each team reduced to 4 players. Then penalties. The Final was played to the same format, but with 10 minutes each way.

Quarter Final:
Arsenal 2 - 0 Happy Valley (Hong Kong)

An easy win, scorers Santry & Kuffour.
Celtic, PSV, & Villa all went out at this stage.

Semi Final:
Arsenal 2 - 1 Yau Yee (Hong Kong) after extra time

The same team which Arsenal beat 1-0 in the group stage. They'd already put Celtic out in extra time, but again Arsenal controlled the match. Chorley scored an Adams-type header from a corner. Arsenal, emulating their first-team counterparts, failed to kill the game despite making lots of chances. Sidwell put the ball over the bar from three yards. Then Yau Yee equalised thatnks to sloppy Aresnal defending (Chilvers culpable), to take the game to extra time. According to Dennis, being reduced to 4 players only accentuated Arsenal's skill advantage. Chilvers or Chorley scored the "Golden Goal" (our correspondents differ, let's hope it was Chilvers, making up for his earlier error).

Yau Yee was a select side made up of the best amateur players from the Hong Kong Yau Yee League. Nick (who had divided loyalties as a Yau Yee player and their webmaster, as well as being a Gooner) decribes them as "Sunday League cloggers". So getting to the semis, beating Celtic on the way, was some achievement. You can just imagine the support they were getting as the competition went on. And all the sweeter to put Celtic out after their coach had been gloating about the "easy draw" in the quarters...

Final:
Arsenal 0 - 0 Instant-dict (Hong Kong)
(Arsenal win 5-4 on penalties)

Like Happy Valley and Yee Hope (who Arsenal drew 0-0 with in the group stage), Instant-Dict are a professional Hong Kong team playing in division 1 of their FA pro league. Champions of it, in fact.

It was a very close game. Stack make three very very good save to keep a clean sheet. Instant Dict played for penalties in extra time.

Penalties:

1st) Bentley   scored,   Instant-dict   scored
2nd) Stack     saved,    Instant-dict   saved
3rd) Chilvers  scored,   Instant-dict   scored
4th) Sidwell   scored,   Instant-dict   scored
5th) Santry    scored,   Instant-dict   scored
6th) Chorley   scored,   Instant-dict   missed

Nice to see there are some good penalties takers around...

Liam Brady played for Lorenz, alongside Gus Caesar and Tony Woodcock. They came runners up in the Masters tournment, losing to Instant-dict's team! Liam Brady usually got on the pitch at half time, and didn't get many chances.