FIFA 2025 U17 Finals: All Teams & Tournament Thread

Ironically, Japan just drew goalless with New Caledonia. The latter lost 6-1 to Portugal, but maybe Portugal NC are better than expected...

 

And maybe New Caledonia isn't so terrible.
I don't know what their youth teams are like, but their senior team gets enough players from France to make things competitive. They lose to a regional rival like New Zealand 3-0; not 14-0. They do have some players based in France on this U17 team. A midfielder from Bastia, for instance.

Population of New Caledonia is like 270k. If they were in CONCACAF, they'd be thought of like Martinique. A very similar population size. And Martinique can get enough players from Europe to make things interesting at times.

 

If Morocco gets similar result in the next game, New Caledonia will advance.

 

New Caledonia can get enough players from Papua New Guinea and American Somoa.

 

I'm super curious how the heck Morocco won the CAF Championship and then completely ---- their pants at this tournament. I don't know if its the "kids" thing, or if its just different players/release problems? It could be hosting too. Hosting is a massive advantage in CAF in particular for Cup of Nations, and Qualifying, so it could just be a huge shifter in general for performance and results.

 

Considering I was looking at CAF and Concacrap yesterday in terms of performance in the tournament: CAF is now 6 wins, 2 draws and 6 losses.

Concacrap is at 2 wins, 1 draw, and 6 losses. Yikes.,

 

They lost their opener 6-1, and their sole goal was a penalty. So they've scored zero goals in the run of play in 2 games, and got obliterated on matchday 1. I didn't watch it, so I have no idea how they tied Japan.

xG probably tells the tale: 2.66 for Japan, and 0.09 for New Caledonia lol.

36-5 in shots, and 11-1 in Sogs

In their 6-1 loss to Portugal they were:
Out xG'd 4.87 to 0.87 and all of that xG was probably the penalty (or nearly all)

and Outshot 49-5
SOG's were 16-1 for Portugal

They are not good at this soccer thing, at all.

Japan were apparently monstrously unlucky and/or unbelievably god awful at finishing their chances.

Just look at those numbers.
In two games:
Total Shots: 85-10
SOG's: 27-2
xG: 7.55 to 0.96, and like probably 0.80 of that xG is a penalty Portugal inexplicably gave up.

 

Strangely enough, that should be enough for Japan to advance. It's unlikely New Caledonia will beat Morocco, so Japan should have secured second with the draw even before playing Portugal.

 

And CAF has 7 U17 Champions with 6 2nd place finishes. That's 13! Concacaf only has Mexico with 2 champions and 2 2nd place finishes so that's 4x. And putting 'crap' at the end is so funny and true! Africa is so much better.

 

On the topic of this tournament being ruined by the size of it. I will totally concede (as a supporter of expansion at all levels) that it would have been much better to simply increase the size to the former WC level, which would have been a +8, and not nearly so distorting. With the youth tournaments all pre-set to reasonable levels of confederation slots, unlike the senior level (which got a bit more reasonable when they increased to 48, after being a glorified Euro Championship+19 random rest of world teams) it would have been easy to just increase the size modestly.

Randomly in 5 minutes this morning:
UEFA: 7.5
Conmebol: 5.5
AFC: 6.5
CAF: 7.5
Concacrap: 4
Oceania: 1+

If we don't want a confederation playoff for the final 2 slots, you could just redistribute 4 between them. But that would be fine. Going to 48, at this level, just seems so expensive when a huge chunk of the world is poor and just getting poorer, and it's just hard to do this at all.

I still prefer expansion to nothing, but yeah, 48 was probably a bridge too far at the U17 level to say it too lightly. Through half of matchday 2 (nearly), we've had 9 games where a side won by 4 or more goals through our first 35 games, basically a quarter of the games have been colossal blow outs. At the '23 U17 World Cup there were 6 blowouts of that scale or larger after the group stage, so, we've definitely got a more volatile World Cup happening, captain obvious I know).

I wonder, did they just want to mirror the senior wc size, and if so, why didn't they do it for the U20 level too? Odd.

 

Burkina Faso beat the Czech Republic fairly comfortably, so maybe they’re actually pretty good?

 

I think the younger the team the more up and down they are. The Czechs destroyed the Taziks while we edged BF. So BF was more motivated as was K*stan while the Czechs ate the cheese thinking how good they were and we baked out a win. So how does that line up for us against the Czechs? They will be more motivated since they have a greater need to win. Will our bunch be brutally efficient to play a real meh game?

 

Finally went to some games today. It's a pretty cool concept - 20 Qatari riyals (US$6) gets you an all day pass and access to 8 games which are played overlapping over 5 hours. You can wonder from game to game or try and sit and watch a full game or two. There are 2 "featured matches" which today were Saudi v New Zealand and France v Canada which you have to pay $3 for to get a special ticket for a seat in the stands. Not really worth it as you can just watch from the side hills or behind the goal tbh. The Ugandan fans were pretty vocal, wish I'd stayed for that whole game but had the Canada v France ticket and was trying to catch a glimpse of every match. Republic or Ireland v Uzbekistan was also surprisingly popular maybe as it was the last game of the day, but both sections of stands were overfull...

Anyway, here's some highlights from today's games. Not great footage but maybe gives and idea what it's like....

 

Due to the seeding system for the knockout rounds, the US could win their group and play a 3rd place team who has 2 days more rest. The concept of seeding all teams after the group stage is fine, but 2 v 4 rest days is a big disadvantage.

 

Ah... so that's why they call it the "under-17s" .....

 

Some lucky group winner will get that Morocco team.

 

They have knocked us out of our last Olympics and U-20 WC.

Why not U-17 WC?

 

That was sarcasm. I watched highlights, they might also be unbalanced, but their finishing is scary. The point is we should give our players a rest, as even if we finish third there is no chance to get Argentina, Brasil, or Italy, and not much difference among the others. I'd rather us to play France than that Morocco.

 

They are good. As I referenced during or after that match, Burkina Faso may have finished 4th in CAF qualifying, but they also only lost 1 game in regulation out of 6 in their campaign (beating Egypt, Cameroon, South Africa, and Zambia along the way: South Africa and Zambia are off to the knockouts, Egypt are live right now, leading the group, but losing to England, and likely falling to third, and Mali (who beat Burkina Faso) are currently in 2nd (Ivory Coast who beat them on penalties in the 3rd place game, got knocked out in the group stage).

 

For the record, I believe CAF is currently 11-5-12, but with a couple of games remaining to be completed.

Concacrap is: 4-3-12 with a couple left to play, and all 4 wins are USA, Mexico and Canada. Our region, or the top of it, needs to merge with something else. The seeming blip of strengthening Concacrap performance ended in '17.

 

I'm actually surprised Canada is making it to the next round. Has anyone seen their games? Are they any good? The stats suggest that they played Uganda and France fairly evenly.

Edit: I'm seeing their friendly record and they do indeed look like a very good side.

 

Canada hasn't advanced to the next round yet... if Chile beat them and Uganda beat France, all four teams would have four points and so whoever finished last in the group would be SOL.

Canada is missing a good CB (Archange from Orlando City) and then pre-tournament Ali-Gayapersad, their best attacking threat was injured as was starting No. 9 Graham-Roache (who got minutes for CF Montreal this season), so I was very pessimistic. But this group had more money invested in them and better prep than recent teams and I think there's more balance and depth than any other U17 team I can remember. I think Uganda were the better side in the opener, but Canada asserted themselves more as the match wore on and found a way to score twice at the death. The France game was pretty dull and scrappy with each team creating one pretty good chance. France were decent, but not nearly what I was expecting from a France youth team who were second in UEFA.

 

I didn't notice that Chile and Uganda both had a point. That said, Chile would need to score 2 goals to catch up in GD. Canada seems to have a good defensive scheme and Chile is not some goal scoring machine so I think you will be just fine. A four way tie has only happened once in all the history of all the world cups so it just seems unlikely.

 

History may be repeating itself - we are very close to a four-by-four in Group K.

4 +1 France
4 +0 Canada
4 +0 Uganda
4 -1 Chile

Chile is leading Canada 2-1, but that is not enough, and Chile just hurt themselves with a late red card.
Edit: 12' of stoppage time added, still 2-1
Edit2: Now full time - Chile 2-1 Canada, but Canada survives.

France is losing 1-0 to Uganda, but that result keeps France first, Uganda third (as things stand).
Edit: 7' of stoppage time. I believe this result will bump Mexico out of the tournament.
Edit2: Full time - Uganda 1-0 France. Both teams advance.

Final standings as posted above. Chile is out. Uganda's victory pushes Mexico out.