Reserve team

In sports, a reserve team (or reserves team in Australian English) is a team composed of players under contract to a specific team but who do not normally appear on the team's roster during matches. Reserve teams are usually composed of young players who need playing time in order to improve their skills, as well as members of the first team recovering from injury.

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.

However, in other countries, reserve teams play in the same football league as their senior team and have competed in the domestic 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.

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