Teenagers Alphonso Davies and Joshua Zirkzee have already made their presence felt in the Bayern Munich first team, and with Hansi Flick at the helm, youth team coach Danny Schwarz thinks young players at the record champions have never had it so good.

Canadian youngster Davies, 19, has made the left-back spot his own this season with a goal, four assists and eight clean sheets from the 21 league games in which he has featured.

Further forward, 18-year-old Dutchman Zirkzee deputised for the injured Robert Lewandowski with aplomb, scoring three goals in five games over the winter months before the coronavirus-enforced interruption in play.

Watch: Davies under the tactical microscope

Prior to this season, the most recent graduate from the Bayern academy to the first team was the 27-year-old David Alaba, who made his full league debut with the record champions back in March 2010.

Whilst coronavirus is expected to compress the transfer market, former Bayern midfielder Schwarz says the club have been well set to focus on youth for quite some time - a situation that has only improved with Flick installed as first-team coach.

"[The chance youngsters have] is bigger than ever," he told Transfermarkt. "The youth players have definitely come into focus because of the campus and also their individual quality.

Hansi Flick (l.) has a close eye on the young players at Bayern, such as Joshua Zirkzee (r.). - imago images / Philippe Ruiz

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"I think Hansi Flick sends the right signals by having many young talents training with the first team. He is very in touch with the youth teams."

Bayern opened a state-of-the-art academy, the FC Bayern Campus, in 2017. As well as Davies and Zirkzee, this season has seen teenagers Sarpreet Singh, Oliver Batista-Meier and Leon Dajaku promoted to first-team training.

Some of the brightest young players in world football are contracted to Bayern, and Schwarz - who played 47 games for Bayern II between 2009 and 2012 - thinks the reserves' promotion to the third tier at the start of last season has also been key.

The champions opened their state-of-the-art €70m FC Bayern Campus in 2017. - DFL

"Young players know there's a stop-over with the U23s in the third division," he said. "No other club can offer that at the moment, and some even got rid of their reserves. It's boom or bust: either you make it pro or you're gone [after U19s].

"Establishing yourself in the third division is hard enough. Many think they can make the jump but, in my opinion, it can be the right step. Philipp Lahm, Bastian Schweinsteiger and Thomas Müller all went this way and it didn't really harm them!"

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