Next year's FIFA U-17 Women's World Cup will be in Azerbaijan. Currently no other teams besides the hosts are qualified, but we will know the three participants from Asia in a few weeks. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_AFC_U-16_Women's_Championship FIFA decide to change the Access List again, because they really didn't like some of the results (0-9 and 1-10 losses for African and North American participants). These results made something very clear. We need less teams from.... Europe! Yep, you heard right. Europe obviously deserves less teams than every other confederation besides OFC. This is the new allocation (Source): Hosts: 1 AFC: 3 CAF: 3 CONCACAF: 3 CONMEBOL: 3 OFC: 1 UEFA: 2
Don't forget the host is considered as "European" so in a kind of manipulated way it gives Europe a 3rd berth...
that is dire. CONCACAF & CONMEBOL with 38 % of the teams and 13 % of the world population. Just force the two to merge already. Not to mention Azerbaijan still hosting this despite being thrown out of Euro 2011 for breaking nationality rules.
I know, but usually the host berth is independent of the other berths. Just look at the allocation of berths used during all the other FIFA world cups (for men, women and youth teams). e.g. U-20 WWC 2008 Host Chile: CONMEBOL 2+1 teams, UEFA 4 teams 2010 Host Germany: CONMEBOL 2 teams, UEFA 4+1 teams or U-17 WC (boys) 2009 Host Nigeria: CAF 4+1 teams, CONCACAF 4 teams 2011 Host Mexico: CAF 4 teams, CONCACAF 4+1 teams
Yes sadly Concacaf and Conmebol do not deserve 3 spots, I mean I am glad we do (Concacaf) but UEAF should have 4+1 and Concacaf 2, Conmebol 2.
i feel bad for Azerbaijan. They won't even be able to compete with anyone, even if a team like Chile, Cameroon or Costa Rica are drawn into their group.
Didn't South Africa beat the French in 2010? BTW FIFA has not updated their website for the 2012 cup, they still have T&T as their main page for the U17 tournament. In Concacaf, the CFU (Caribean part of Concacaf) had their eliminations this past two months. http://www.concacaf.com/page/WUnder17s/Schedule/0,,12813,00.html
CAF U-17 qualifiers start in November. PRELIMINARY ROUND - 11/26/2011 & 12/10/2011 Kenya vs. Mozambique FIRST ROUND - 1/21/2012 & 2/4/2012 Botswana vs. Zambia Kenya/Mozambique winner vs. Nigeria Gambia vs. Sierra Leone Guinea vs. Tunisia Nambia vs. South Africa Cameroon vs. Ghana FINAL ROUND - 3/10/2012 & 3/24/2012 Botswana/Zambia winner vs. Kenya/Mozambique/Nigeria winner Gambia/Sierra Leone winner vs. Guinea/Tunisia winner Nambia/South Africa winner vs. Cameroon/Ghana winner the winners of the final round will advance to the U-17 WWC in Azerbaijan. This draw favors Tunisia to advance, yet will deny either Cameroon, Ghana or South Africa.
CAF always uses very poor qualifying formats. Straight knock out rounds aren't the best way to determine the best teams. They should have used at least one group stage. Currently I like the AFC format the best, because they have one big final group stage. Then CONCACAF, CONMEBOL and UEFA all have pretty similiar formats, which are good, too. However depending on the number of berths the best two teams might face and eliminate each other in the semifinals. I already see a U-17 Spain - U-17 Germany semifinal this season.
Re: FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup 2012 BTW 2014 U-17 will be hosted by Costa Rica http://www.concacaf.com/page/WUnder17s/NewsDetail/0,,12813~2307376,00.html
Re: FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup 2012 I find this to be strange. Why again in North America and not in Africa or Asia? There were official bids from Ghana, Uzbekistan and UAE. Edit: I also took a look at the U-17 men's world cups, when they only played with 16 teams. And apparently these were the only world cups, where the host slot was not a separated slot. They always adjusted the access list to have 3 teams from each confederation but the OFC. Strangely enough they didn't do this during the first U-17 WWC. I still think it's an unfair spot allocation. It works well for the men (however they don't use this flexible host spot since they expanded the tournament to 24 teams) but not so well for the women.
Huh I have to agree with Lusankya in saying that it comes across as a very weak decision to give it once again to a CONCACAF nation. With the strength and progress of east Asia, and the glimmer of respectability coming out of west Africa within the youth categories, you would think it was a perfect moment to give their confederations a youth WWC. I mean take a look at the AFC. The AFC over the last three FIFA women's tournaments have had ridiculous amounts of success. They had all 3 of their qualified U-17 teams finish in the finals top four, seeing a 3rd place finish with Korea Rep in the U-20's, all topped off with Japan becoming the new senior world champions. Why not reward that primarily east Asian progress by giving central or west Asia a chance to showcase and elevate the sport within their regions too?
Seeding pots for the second qualifying round of the U-17 EURO are announced: Pot A: Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, France Pot B: Sweden, Spain (holders), Norway, England Pot C: Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Republic of Ireland Pot D: Serbia, Iceland, Poland, Finland So with some bad luck the only two winners of the competition could already eliminate each other before the final tournament.
Finally FIFA.com updated the U-17 WWC HP: http://www.fifa.com/u17womensworldcup/ (still no sign of the U-20 WWC 2012) They also revealed the yet nameless mascott. The mascot is an Asian looking girl with a ponytail, who wears a Buka.
There may be a guy under that. http://www.fifa.com/u17womensworldcup/photogallery/gallery=1535227.html#1533741
Yeah, good to see a new team from the AFC. South Korea won't be able to defend their title, but they were quite poor during the qualifying so they kind of deserve it.
Mozambique have withdrawn from women's under-17 World Cup qualifying, so Kenya advance to the next round of the African qualifying competition. http://www.michezoafrika.com/haramb...t-round-after-mozambique-withdrawal/3636.aspx
First round, first leg results in African qualifying Botswana 1:5 Zambia Kenya 0:2 Nigeria Gambia 3:0 Sierra Leone Guinea withdrew (Tunisia advance) Namibia 1:1 South Africa Cameroon 0:1 Ghana Nigeria, Tunisia, and Ghana look very likely to be the African qualifiers.
Fisrt round, second leg results in African qualifying Nigeria 3:0 Kenya (5:0 aggregate) South Africa 5:0 Namibia (6:1 aggregate)