At the European Championship of 2000, the German national team went out in the group stage. The German Football Association responded with a plan for the long term. It expanded its talent program to 390 training centers for players aged eleven to seventeen. From 2001, youth academies were introduced in the Bundesliga, and from 2002 they were mandatory in the second division as well. Today every club in both leagues must run one to obtain its license. The academies were long seen as the origin of the golden generation that won the World Cup in 2014.