History
Reserve teams usually consist of a combination of emerging youth players and first team squad players. These teams are distinct from a club's youth team, which usually consists of players under a certain age and plays in an age-specific league. In England, Argentina and the United States the term reserve is commonly used to describe these teams. In Germany and Austria the terms Amateure or II is used, while B team is used in the Spanish football league system, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Portugal. In the Netherlands and Norway these teams are distinguished by a 2. In England reserve teams of league clubs play in completely separate leagues and competitions such as the FA Premier Reserve League or the Central League, although further down the pyramid, reserve clubs feature in the same system as their parent clubs and can be promoted through the system. They cannot usually play in the same division as their parent team, although there are some exceptions to this (the Yorkshire Old Boys League, for example, allows more than one team from the same club to play in the same division).
However, in other countries, reserve teams play in the same football pyramid as their senior team and have competed in the national cup competitions. In Spain this has seen the reserve team of CD Málaga change identity and play in La Liga while Castilla CF, the reserve team of Real Madrid, reached the Copa del Rey final, qualified for the European Cup Winners' Cup and won the Segunda División.
In Germany, Hertha BSC II, the reserve team of Hertha Berlin, reached the 1992–93 DFB-Pokal final after their first team were eliminated in the quarter finals. They lost the final 1–0 to Bayer Leverkusen. In the German football league system, however, reserve teams are not allowed to be promoted above the 3. Liga and from 2008–09 will not be allowed to play in the cup competition to serve the non-reserve team's interests. In the 2003-04 season, Bayern Munich's reserve team won the Regionalliga Süd, a semi-professional league then in the third tier of German football (now the fourth), finishing nine points clear of the second-placed FC Rot-Weiß Erfurt. Due to the rule which prohibits one club from having two teams in fully professional leagues, the third-placed 1. FC Saarbrücken was promoted to the Second Bundesliga instead.
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