Now that we've qualified, I figured I'd start a thread for general news regarding the tournament in Brazil. Since it was moved from Peru it still doesn't have an official start date, but I imagine it'll be around October when the tournament was originally scheduled to take place. 4 of the 6 confederations have wrapped up their qualification tournaments, and CONCACAF and UEFA have almost wrapped up theirs. The qualified teams are... AFC: Australia Japan South Korea Tajikistan (time to get revenge for 2007) CAF: Cameroon Nigeria Angola Guinea CONMEBOL: Brazil (Hosts) Argentina Chile Ecuador Paraguay Oceania: New Zealand Solomon Islands CONCACAF: USA Canada Winner of Haiti/Honduras Winner of Mexico/El Salvador UEFA: France Netherlands Winner of Hungary/Spain Winner of Italy/Portual Additionally UEFA will have a playoff between the top 2 quarterfinal losers, and the winner will get their last World Cup spot
The Solomon Islands were initially disqualified when they were believed to have used an overage player in the qualifying tournament. However they appealed and were able to produce a passport for the player in question that showed he was young enough. Usually you expect New Zealand to dominate OFC, The Solomon Islands actually beat The Kiwis by 5 goals in the group stage (though The Kiwis did win the rematch in the final in penalties)
Apparently their main man is an '02 named Raphael Le'ai who recently moved to Wellington Phoenix from a domestic club. https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/footb...raphael-leai-joins-wellington-phoenix-academy
Haiti beats Honduras in PK's after missing their first 2 in the shootout. Mexico rolls El Salvador 5-1 They will round out your CONCACAF teams
Nice to see Haiti qualify. One, it's nice to see another nation besides the usual suspects, like Honduras, qualify, and two, I have a fond place in my heart for Haiti, given all the travail they endure.
It seems like Honduras goes three in and out in every FIFA tournament they qualify for at all levels. If they can't get the job done, its better someone else from the region represents CONCACAF.
They also are usually very dirty and no tournament needs those teams injuring the players we enjoy watching. I sure wish FIFA would emphasize this with CONCACAF refs.
I always say they are the dirtiest team in the region. It's been a little better recently in these last two qualifying tournaments because the games were in the USA where they can't get away with their dirty antics as much. I still remember last cycle in the U-20 qualifying where they injured our two best players in the final. It made the victory even better when a Honduran born player scored the winning penalty. I think the main reason why Honduras is able to compete to qualify for these tournaments and is able to compete for 3-5 in the region with Costa Rica and Panama consistently is that they are the best at using their antics to their advantage. They don't have the same skill level as those teams usually, but they know how to make the game a street-fight instead of a game of football.
Sometimes the participants that come out of UEFA are really odd, and makes me think we have a good chance. Not this time. It looks like they'll have at least 4 powers make it (and then the playoff winner).
Hungary gets the final spot in penalties. Wikipedia already has the pots listed, though I'm extremely skeptical that they'd be out this soon. Pot 1 Brazil Spain Mexico USA Argentina France Pot 2 Guinea Italy New Zealand Canada Australia Chile Pot 3 Netherlands Nigeria South Korea Paraguya Ecuador Japan Pot 4 Hungary Haiti Tajikistan Solomon Islands Angola Cameroon
Inbox: Following on from a FIFA inspection visit to Brazil and further discussions with the Local Organising Committee (LOC), FIFA can today confirm that the FIFA U-17 World Cup Brazil 2019 will be played from 26 October until 17 November. The venues and the full match schedule will be confirmed ahead of the draw, which has been scheduled for 11 July 2019 at the Home of FIFA in Zurich.
Reminder: The draw is tomorrow. From the inbox: The draw will take place at the Home of FIFA in Zurich on 11 July 2019 at 15:00 (CET) and will be live-streamed on FIFA’s YouTube channel. FIFA also announced venues today: The Estádio Bezerrão in Brasília (Gama) will make football history on 26 October when it hosts the opening match of the FIFA U-17 World Cup, the first-ever edition of this prestigious tournament to be staged in Brazil. ... The other tournament venues will be Goiânia’s Estádio Olímpico and Estádio da Serrinha, as well as the Estádio Kléber Andrade in Vitória (Cariacica)
Since FIFA doesn't have the pots listed, I used wikipedia to get the old point values for the last five tournaments and multiplied via the formula. I added 5 points for each of the current confederation champions. Assuming that FIFA doesn't give 5 or percentage thereof bonus points for previous confederation champions, and that I didn't screw up somewhere, I believe the pots are: Pot 1: Brazil (host), Mexico, Nigeria, France, Japan, Spain Pot 2: Argentina, United States, Paraguay, New Zealand, Ecuador, South Korea Pot 3: Netherlands, Italy, Cameroon, Australia, Chile, Canada Pot 4: Tajikistan, Angola, Senegal, Haiti, Solomon Islands, Hungary According to my math, Spain is at 18.2 points and the US is at 12.6 so even if we had won the U-17 Concacaf 'ship, we still wouldn't have made it to pot 1. Best case scenario draw is probably: Japan, Netherlands/Italy/Cameroon/Chile (honestly Pot 3 is a bear), Solomon Islands.
It would be nice to get some revenge on Tajikistan. That one still stings. https://www.fifa.com/u17worldcup/matches/round=249415/match=58926/index.html
The downside to that would be that since they are an AFC team, you'd get: Brazil and Netherlands/Italy/Cameroon Nigeria and Netherlands/Italy/Chile France/Spain and Cameroon/Chile as the other teams in the group.
Group A: Brazil, Canada, New Zealand, Angola Group B: Nigeria, Hungary, Ecuador, Australia Group C: South Korea, Haiti, France, Chile Group D: USA, Senegal, Japan, Netherlands Group E: Spain, Argentina, Tajikstan, Cameroon Group F: Solomon Islands, Italy, Paraguay, Mexico
Revenge will have to wait. I guess that's a pretty tough group -- maybe the toughest of any CONCACAF team, at least on paper -- but, in any case, those are three good tests.
Getting closer, though still probably too early for official rosters. With that said, we should start getting more stuff along those lines soon. Here's FIFA with a profile of Hungary's team, which apparently hasn't been in the tournament for more than 30 years. This will be the first time that Hungary is taking part in 34 years—the longest break between two appearances of any country. One of the players named is a Genk striker named Andras Nemeth, born in South Africa. https://www.fifa.com/u17worldcup/news/hungary-expectations-fifa-u17-world-cup-3049567 A feature on Nemeth (note to aspiring writers: don't quote facts): "I had a made a great development at Genk, they say," the teenage striker told KickOff. "I scored around 20 goals in season 2017/18, I became the most prolific goal scorer on the Puskas-Suzuki U17 tournament in 2018 too, that our team won ahead of respectable teams as Sporting Lisbon, Real Madrid and Bayern München." https://www.kickoff.com/news/articl...o-genk-and-u17-world-cup-qualification/655830
Wikipedia usually stays reasonably up to date on these things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_FIFA_U-17_World_Cup_squads Japan's is out, but not on Wikipedia yet: https://web.gekisaka.jp/news/detail/?286890-286890-fl Still waiting on Netherlands and Senegal.
The Guardian Next Gen list is out: https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...0-of-the-best-young-talents-in-world-football 15 of the 24 teams in the U17 WC have a player on the list. Some of the players are not attending despite being eligible (Ansu Fati, for example). The top are: France with 4 selected out of 5 eligible. Spain with 3 out of 4 Brazil's 3 are all selected Argentina has 3 listed but no roster yet For our group: The USA has 2 (Reyna and Busio) Netherlands has 2 (neither is likely to be selected) Japan has one Senegal has one but no roster yet There are 2 USA eligible players on the list but other NTs: Malik Tillman and Efra Alvarez.