Still surprised nothing has been announced for what's replacing the rest of the tournament. The draw for the U17 WWC is in a few weeks.
First, a point of order: the US collegiate sports system demands that members pay millions of dollars in entry fees to higher divisions. If a small faith-based school does not enter a top college league is primarily due to the prohibitive costs of entry and competition. A protectionist measure to keep money flowing between schools, whose competition costs are already high as it is: join our conference if you got the money, we do not care if you have good teams (Rutgers enters Big Ten Conference in 2012). Second, U17 is an age bracket for player development, so a demand for a high competition product is misplaced. There can still be a U17 World Cup, and we should expect to see teams in their developing stages, not as a finished products. Around the world, U17 is the age where player prospects start to drop out so they can sustain their family. Organizing U17 tournaments can be the difference of choosing sport as a career, as well as convincing world communities that women can reach top athlete status. It is not a charity event where FIFA invites impoverished countries to the world stage, it is a drive to change women's societal roles in several countries. Seeing teams routed at a world competition is unpleasant, but we should be really careful of enacting barriers like the US collegiate sports system does. You mentioned "small nation" plus "record of competence / competitiveness". Would you elaborate on what do you mean by those terms?
I had that match in the background as I did paperwork. It was even closer than that! 2-0 for much of 2H, then Costa Rica scored at 85', and in the last 3 minutes they created about 4 scrambles around Canada's 6-top, and never got the final touch. This crop of Canada U17s has some really tall players.
Group A Mexico 1 - 1 Haiti Group B Costa Rica 6 - 1 Bermuda USA 1 - 0 Canada Semis Mexico - Canada USA - Haiti
June 10 Semis Mexico 2 - Canada 1 United States 3 - Haiti 2 June 12 Third Place Canada vs. Haiti Final Mexico vs. United States Can Haiti upset Canada again?
They would've if it wasn't for the refs... to sum it up is 83:26 - that wasn't a foul, nor 85:25 - which wasn't a PK Canada 2 - 1 Haiti