Poor choices in my opinion but: Golden Ball: Paul Pogba Silver Ball: Nicolas Lopez Bronze Ball: Clifford Aboagye No way does Lopez deserve the Silver Ball ahead of Assifuah...
Well, if they continue their progression, they should be in next 2016 Olympic games (U23) at the finals, and afterwards in Russia's 2018 WC (senior level). Very promising future for them......
France have won this tournament , but they are very overrated , they have been very lucky because Turkey and Uzbekistan were joke teams. The lost against Spaing playing very badly , and had a drawn against EEUU in his group, and they havent been better than Ghana or Uruguay . When they have played against serious defensive teams, they have suffered a lot , and they have showed that apart from physical advantage, they have many problems to create football.Ghana and Uruguay had many more dificult matchess to arrive at semifinals, and this is very important in this type of tournament where many teams have the same level, and matchess are very close.
Does it really matter, against whom they won or lost ? At the end, it was them who raised the u20 WC trophee. For historic records, they will be we always remembered as the World Cup champions of 2013. That's the only thing that matters here. You don`t like it ?, ......go play checkers......, as football is not for you.
the only thing worse than a bad loser is a bad winner so i'll agree that france didn't look at all great in their last 165 minutes. but the trophy is still theirs. for eternity.
Really? I probably watched a different game because all I saw was an Iraqi team holding possession in their own half of the pitch. The Ghana keeper was NOT even threatened once. Iraq did most of the running, Ghana did the scoring. That's not a good performance in my view! They have good players but they need to learn to create chances...
In high-level sports, age matters. What’s interesting, though, is that the way it matters and whydepend on the sport. In soccer, for example, players lie and make themselves younger so as to compete in youth-only competitions. In baseball, on the hand, players want to be younger, but not so as to compete against kids, but so that MLB teams will see them as more valuable prospects. Then you have sports like gymnastics, which swings the other way altogether. In that sport, since little girls have a competitive advantage over grown women, the incentive is to lie and say you are actually older than you are. http://www.totalprosports.com/2011/10/21/11-athletes-who-lied-about-their-age/
Chinese school admits age fraud in soccer tourney A Chinese high school principal has admitted his girls' soccer team was filled with players from the junior national squad and apologized for the fraud, state media reported Friday. BEIJING — A Chinese high school principal has admitted his girls' soccer team was filled with players from the junior national squad and apologized for the fraud, state media reported Friday. Daping Junior High's Zhang Jianling said that only three of the 15 team members sent to an international girls tournament in Turkey actually attended his school in the Yuzhong district of the western city of Chongqing. "The fraud and cheating produced an enormous negative effect on the image of the country, of Chongqing, and of Yuzhong," ZhangZhang, who received an administrative demerit from the city's board of education, was quoted as saying by the Titan Sports newspaper. http://seattletimes.com/html/sports/2009074154_apsocchinafraudsquad.html
Yeah your right we didn't see the same match, if some neutral members here if this forum agreed with what I said then im the one who was saying the true picture of the game, For people who didnt know this was Iraqs first lost then the qualification to the u.20, we deserved atleast the bromze :/
Inasmuch as I agree that the match was far from onesided and a 3:0 loss was undeserved, Ghana was the better team on the day. That said you were unlucky not to make the final, so I can agree you deserved at least silver, but... you didn't deserve bronze
Potash Thanks for the links to the athletes/age stories. However, please refrain from posting the entire text of articles hosted on other sites. Just a bit of the article and a link is fine. It's a little known rule and many people are surprised by it, but it's something we do try to enforce.
It was shown yesterday on Fox Soccer Channel: from what I recall it included Castillo as the lone striker; Olivier and Pogba as the CMs; Ghana's LM (I can understand that as their LB was very poor)... Let me look around to see if I can find it or an article on it.
You mean that very poor left back, which ran circles around the Chilean right side of the field? I guess that makes the Chilean RB and RW terribly poor. As for your list I don't think FIFA named an official best XI. If they had Aboagye would replace Olivier as a CM, which is a given.