MVP has a lot to do with hype. Weah's hattrick was his first mark of the tournament and his second goal will likely end up the goal of the tournament. Overall we can be certain of one thing - only a player who makes the semis at least will be in with a shout, so a lot depends on who progresses from USA vs England. Another player with a shout must be Ndiaye from Mali. Albeit I think Giddou looks like the real show stopper. Looks like a real talent. BTW With all the talent Mali has had at U17 and U20 level they really should have a nice set of players in a few years time. Haidara and Samasekkou are already doing great from themselves at Red Bull Salzburg, Aly Malle is at Udinese and progressing nicely, Adama Traore at Monaco, just scored this weekend, so hopefully his injuries are behind him. They've been at 3 out of the last 4 youth tournaments. Should be a good bet for a 2022 World Cup debut.
Brazil, as expected, beat Honduras 3:0 and Ghana beat Niger 2:0. The quarterfinal lineup will, therefore, be as follows: England v USA Brazil v Germany Iran v Spain Mali v Ghana
Durkin has been the best American player overall this tournament. But defensive midfielders never get MVP. After him Carleton who was the best player against Paraguay.
Ghana vs Mali has started. Torrential downpour. All bets are off. Whoever wins this game will do so simply by chance. This is a kickfest. In such conditions even Brazil could lose to New Caledonia... I would however think this benefits the more physical teams, so Mali should take it. Mali - Ghana 1:0.
England on course for Brazil. They might just be good enough... That is if Brazil gets past Germany first. We may yet have 3 European semifinalists. Alternately we can still have 4 different confeds: UEFA, CONMEBOL, CAF and AFC.
Wouldn't be so sure, our Premier League teams will manage stuff it up and they will end up playing in league one Thanks for the encouraging words though
Yeah, look at Germany, Spain or Italy and then compare to England. The English teams are the only teams where its hard to find Englishmen playing... Meanwhile German teams are based on German players, Spanish teams on Spanish and so on.
Well it's kind of a new thing for England isn't it? Taking these youth tournaments seriously, England never did that well before, but now we've had the U20s World Cup champions and now they are going far in the U17s too. But it's so hard to say what to read into youth cup performances. I mean, Nigeria aren't exactly blowing the whole world away at senior level these days...
Really? Their recent successes are U17 level 2013 and 2015 and a bronze at the Olympics 2016. The U17 players from 2013 are now 21 at most and several players have progressed nicely from there (albeit the regression of Iheanacho under Pep Guardiola and onwards has been very worrying), while the 2015 crowd are now 18-19 years old, so they just turned professional. The effects of those wins, if at all, will be felt in full in 2022, not in 2018. For example, just now one of the U17 goalkeepers from 2013, Uzoho, started his first game for Deportivo in the La Liga and looks set to be the first choice goalie sooner than later. Their prior wins shouldn't matter much, because it was the age cheat era, albeit their U17 wins backs in the 1980s did precede the 1990s Super Eagles, who you can agree were no pushovers. As for Olympics several players are now mainstays for the Super Eagles. They did make the 2014 knockout stages and outplayed France up until being screwed over by the ref and being forced to look to their admitedly poor bench. And now - largely thanks to youth team succes - Nigeria has no weak bench. They just qualified with flying colours from arguably the most unfair qualifying group in World Cup history and are now treated as a real threats and arguably the best team from Africa. If you only look at the clubs that Nigerians now play for there is a stark upgrade from where Nigeria was in 2014, so obviously their recent U17 successes have made their mark. I know Belgium isn't a top league, but Nigerians have absolutely dominated that league this season with most players there 18-22. Nigeria is obviously on the up and given the delay between U17 success and senior team success you can obviously see the correlation. As for England 2018 is too early for them and the recent youth success will only take hold come 2022. Out of 21 outfield players recently called up 8 are 21 years old or younger (U17 World Cup 2013, U20 World Cup 2015), 14 are 25 years old or younger (Olympics 2016). From the older players only Obi Mikel, Odion Ighalo, Leon Balogun and Victor Moses are mainstays, whereas Mikel and Ighalo also had success at youth level for Nigeria. The remaining three players (Ogu, Nwakaeme, Echiejile) are on borrowed time, until one of the youth players like Onyekuru, Bonaventure, Muazam, Nura Abdullahi, Nwakali make the cut. Its also safe to say these three players belong to Nigeria's weakest and there are obvious upgrades waiting in the wings. BTW U20 World Cup, U17 World Cup, but also 3rd in U21 UEFA Championship and U19 UEFA Championship winner. All this year.
That sure went south for Asia... So well in the group phase, but no 1/2 finalist. Did we overrate Iran after how they absolutely gutted Germany? Spain thoroughly outplayed Iran today. So we have: Spain vs Mali England vs Brazil / Germany BTW Recently European teams are doing much better at youth events, while CONMEBOL mostly worse (save Brazil). Could this be a sign of things to come?
i knew we would choke against spain. shame though, because i think the only team that would definitely beat us in this tournament is england. had we beaten spain we could have beaten any of the other teams, obviously germany which we slaughtered, and germany is beating brazil 1-0 right now, and we would probably have also got past mali or ghana. but for some reason, spains style is the most difficult for us, and we got spain. it didnt help that our coach gave too much respect to spain and started with a defeatist attitude, perhaps due to not having his best player, but it was not the right decision. it is not that spain is necessarily a better team, but the way they play is just a difficult style for us to overcome. we didnt have our best player which made a difference but oh well. good tournament overall. hopefully it opens the door to similar future performances, as we have been poor in youth tournaments prior to this one.
Looking like a Mali vs UEFA scenario is on our hands... UEFA has never had more than 2 semifinalists in 17 tournaments! Most often they have just the one.
Brazil missed quite a few scoring chances in the second half but have managed to turn the game around. 2 x 1
Spain v Iran 3:1 I couldn't follow the match, but reading about it, it seems Spain thoroughly outclassed and dominated the match. Reports suggest Iran gave Spain too much respect. Regardless, we had a good enough run until this game and return home with 4 wins, only 1 loss, 13 goals scored and 5 goals conceded.
Spain vs Mali England vs Brazil Very strong semis. Any ideas for MVP? I can't see a clear favorite so far. Lassana Ndiaye obvious candidate from Mali. Jadon Sancho for England (although I really loved Odoi, but Sancho has the hype coming into the tournament). Brenner and Lincoln for Brazil but they seem to miss a clear cut star. As for Spain... honestly stuggle to name a star there. Maybe Abel Ruiz because he had a tremendous game today. Overall seems like the semis will decide this. As for golden boot winners: 5 goals: Gouiri (France), Arp (Germany), Ndiaye (Mali) 4 goals: Brewster (England), Ruiz (Spain) 3 goals: Brenner, Lincoln, Paulinho (Brazil), Sancho (England), Drame, Traore (Mali)
Iran was missing a prolific striker Delfi. Iranian coach chose an ultra defensive formation which is not good. Defending without sufficient counter attacks won't work. I think Iranian team lost to a bad game plan. Anyway good luck Spain.
The missing striker would not solve the fact that Iran lost the battle in midfield. I for one struggle to understand how a team that trampled all over Germany managed just 32% of possession vs Spain, especially given Spain haven't exactly excelled in this department vs other teams. Iran played like scared pretenders to the trophy. Meanwhile they headed into the 1/4 final as favorites. Iran should have played an attacking game like vs Germany. I have no idea what happened there...
Iran had an average possession of 41% in our previous matches. the missing striker had a lot to do with it: the coach decided to play defensive + counterattacks, and without sufficient firepower due to the missing striker, it was a bad game plan. yea, we should have played more attacking despite the missing striker. but the problem was compounded due to spains style. they have the best passing. other teams outclassed us in terms of passing and midfield and possession, but we beat them. spain was just too good in that regard (we had even less possession this game), and coupled with the poor game plan from our coach, and missing our best player/striker, we lost. but you cant expect us to beat players who come from real madrid/barca world class youth systems, compared to our nonexistent youth system. it was an unfortunate match up. we would have had a better chance against every other team, except maybe england.
I didn't see the thumping that Germany received from Iran but perhaps too much importance is being placed on the margin of victory(?) That's natural to do in situations where we don't have too much else to go on. At the senior WC level - when we generally know alot more about the teams & players - I don't think we'd take a blowout too seriously. Nobody thought Holland were WC favorites just because they beat Spain 5-1. And nobody was really surprised when Germany lost to Spain in 2010, even though they won their 2 previous matches 4-1 & 4-0, while Spain won each match only by one goal. Most people still felt Spain were going to beat Germany.