Jakarta, Surabaya (19/11 – 20)

With the elimination of their national team on Saturday, Indonesia’s capabilities to put on its finest show as the host of the 2023 Under-17 World Cup will be tested. Indonesia has been given a second chance to host a global football tournament once again, with the 19th Edition of the FIFA Under-17 World Cup, a moving spectacle held in Jakarta, Surabaya, Surakarta and Bandung, from 10 November to 2 December 2023.

This opportunity arrived just months after FIFA stripped out Indonesia’s hosting rights for the 2023 FIFA Under-20 World Cup. The bid wa doomed by protests and political turmoil, surrounding the potential participation of Israel in that tournament. The likes of Bali’s governor Wayan Koster and Central Java’s governor Ganjar Pranowo, currently a candidate for President, pushed against hosting the Israeli team as Indonesia maintains a political stance in support of the independence of the state of Palestine.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo told the nation while “their support for Palestine has always been solid and strong”, the citizens of Indonesia “should not mix sports and politics”. Nevertheless, FIFA pulled the plug in March and the tournament was subsequently relocated to Argentina.

Assumed to serve as compensation for the loss of the 2023 FIFA U-20 World Cup hosting rights, FIFA officially appointed Indonesia as the new host of the 2023 Under-17 World Cup in June, as a result of concerns about Peru’s preparedness. So far the 2023 FIFA Under-17 World looks adequate, with the hastily appointed new host.

“What is important is that we prepare ourselves to be a good host,” Indonesia’s soccer federation president Erick Thohir stated. “We are all optimistic that this will go well. FIFA has openly stated that they appraise our standards as higher than those of the countries which usually host the Under-17 World Cup,” Thohir added.

As of 18 November 2023, all group phase matches came off smoothly. Some of the matches scheduled for Bandung were delayed because of bad weather, but that’s about it. Many of the teams visiting from overseas praised the quality of the stadiums and pitches.

Brazil U-17 tactician Phelipe Leal was amazed by Jakarta International Stadium.  “This is very crazy. This is a big stadium, it is beautiful and I am very surprised that they can make a stadium like this,” he said.

As of 18 November 2023, there have been 126 goals scored in 36 matches, for an average of 3.5 goals per match, making it one of the most entertaining Under-17 World Cups in history. Several players have already lit up the tournament with their qualities. Fans in the 2023 FIFA Under-17 World Cup may already see the next Mesut Oezil, Sadio Mane, Lionel Messi, or Neymar in the form of Noah Darvich of Germany, Amara Diouf (Senegal), Claudio Echeverri (Argentina), and Rayan (Brazil).

Entering the knockout phase, which will start on Monday, there are, however, certain concerns.

The occupancy of stadiums will be open to question, now that the Indonesian national team was eliminated in the group stage. FIFA sets a target of 10,000 spectators per match in this year’s Under-17 World Cup.

When the Indonesian national team was on the field, that target was easily achieved. There were 30,583 fans when Indonesia played Ecuador. Then, 17,239 supporters showed up for the match of Indonesia vs. Panama and 26,454 cheered on the home team at the last game of Indonesia.

Other matches are struggling to meet the 10,000 target, as the Indonesian tournament has averaged just 8,454 spectators per match. It is actually quite common for an Under-17 World Cup tournament to only record a modest attendance.

Four years ago in Brazil, there were only 3,358 fans per match. But now with the Indonesian team no longer a contestant, it is normal to assume that the currently average of 8,000 fans per match might significantly dip.

Hopefully, that will not be the case, as Indonesia is a football-loving nation. Fans of the sport should not miss their chance to watch the best 16 teams in the world competing in what will be a great knock-out phase, and witness the players who could well be taking over world football in the next 10 years.

The post The 2023 FIFA Under-17 World Cup in Indonesia: The Future of Football Enters a Knockout Phase with no Beloved Home Team appeared first on Tashkent Citizen.

National head coach Kim Pan Gon deliberately chose one stronger team and another that is equivalent to the strength of the Harimau Malaya squad as opponents during the FIFA International Match Calendar from March 20-28.

The Harimau Malaya, ranked 145th, will meet Turkmenistan (135th) at the Sultan Ibrahim Stadium in Iskandar Puteri tomorrow night before facing Hong Kong (146th) on March 28 at the same venue.

The 53-year-old South Korean-born coach said through the two Tier 1 international friendlies, his team will gain something valuable from a stronger team and have a chance to maintain good momentum in the hunt for ranking points.

“For Turkmenistan, we accepted their proposal because I think they were disappointed when they lost against us (during the 2023 Asian Cup Qualifier campaign in Kuala Lumpur last year (Malaysia won 3-1), so they are eager to come here to prove themselves that they are better than Malaysia.

“So we are happy to invite them here to have a rematch, we also want to prove ourselves that we are the better team than Turkmenistan. I think it should be an interesting game tomorrow,” he told the pre-match press conference ahead of the clash against Turkmenistan, here, today.

He added that the result is not what he is looking for in tomorrow’s match, but a positive performance and the philosophy of Malaysian football are his priority.

At the same time, he described the two matches, against Turkmenistan and Hong Kong, as showing how earnest the national team are to prepare not only for the 2023 Asian Cup but also for the 2026 World Cup qualifying round scheduled to start next November.

“World Cup Qualification and Asian Cup final round are very important for Malaysian football’s future,” he said.

Meanwhile, Pan Gon admitted that he faced difficulties in deciding the starting line-up against Turkmenistan when all 27 players including eight new faces are currently in their best shape and ready to play tomorrow night.

“New players adapting well, they showed us their ambition, passion to be better and to challenge to get into the first eleven (starting line-up). I’m confident anyone can be in the first eleven, everybody very fit and I’m having a headache making the list,” he said.

In the meantime, he is excited to go through a new experience managing the team during the month of Ramadan which is expected to start tomorrow but feels that fasting will not have much effect on the players’ performance in training or in matches.

In a separate development, according to FAM officials, Turkmenistan are expected to arrive here in the late evening and will not undergo training, but instead will only go to the match venue to inspect pitch conditions. – Bernama

Source : The Sun Daily

The post Pan Gon Expects Interesting Match Against Wounded Turkmenistan appeared first on Tashkent Citizen.

Amid the stultifying debate over whether the ball had crossed the byline before Ao Tanaka’s winner for Japan against Spain, something more important was lost. The goal ultimately ensured that, for the first time, every inhabited continent was represented in a World Cup last 16. Less than a day would pass before South Korea enhanced Asia’s contingent, guaranteeing the most diverse knockout stage in the tournament’s history.

It makes for a mouthwatering set of ties and will also be music to the ears of Qatar, which assiduously posits itself as a unifying force regardless of evidence to the contrary. Hosting a competition with a greater global spread of participants than any other is not hard to spin positively: the mix is a consequence of drama that, after a slow start, gave this group stage a claim to be the best ever on pure footballing terms.

Those outside Europe and South America have particular cause to agree. Six countries from beyond football’s traditional powerhouse continents have reached the knockout stage and, in the nine previous iterations to include a last 16, that had never been done. Africa has matched its best performance in qualifying two of its five entrants, Morocco and Senegal, without the presence of stars such as Sadio Mané, Riyad Mahrez, Victor Osimhen and Mohamed Salah; Asia has equalled its high-water mark of 2002. The Asian Football Confederation can claim its best performance given Australia have fallen under its aegis since 2006.

What does any of this mean? It may be folly to draw sweeping conclusions given, for those not in Europe, small allocations mean the line between perceived success and failure can be wafer thin. One result can change everything. Only four years have passed since Africa was soul-searching after failing to send anyone beyond the group stage, Didier Drogba describing it as “a big step back”.

Now it can point to a World Cup that, on one level, has already been its best: African teams have won a record seven matches in Qatar and only a decent Ghana side, whose fortunes turned on André Ayew’s early penalty miss against Uruguay, recorded fewer than four points. The standard of football in Africa has not rollercoastered that wildly over the past half-decade in practice.

“It’s very, very difficult to get far if you have five slots,” the then Ghana manager, Otto Addo, pointed out after their opening defeat by Portugal. “If you have 12 or 14 slots the probability that a team will get further is much, much higher.”

Africa will have at least nine sides at the expanded World Cup in 2026, one of whose vanishingly few blessings is that increased allocations for the previously less favoured regions should make it easier to detect trends. Asia’s contingent will rise by at least two. A third of the slots will come from Europe, down from its current share of 40%.

Given hopeful proclamations of a new world order did not come to pass after 2002, when Senegal joined the cohosts South Korea in the quarter-finals, optimism about a wider levelling up should be tempered. But the idea is not entirely fanciful. It was striking to hear the Morocco coach, Walid Megraoui, speaking after the tight goalless draw with Croatia that set the foundations for his team’s later success.

“We played like a European team and that’s why I am so happy,” he said. “If we had played brilliantly and lost then everyone would be very upset. We played in a very solid way like a European team and made it difficult for them to play against us. We need to look at African specifics and understand how to win when a match is tight.”

It suggests that, in a football world of few secrets, the intensely drilled methods honed in the Premier League, Bundesliga, La Liga and Serie A may finally have seeped down into the more chaotic realm of the international game. Bar Qatar and Saudi Arabia, whose respective fortunes were decidedly mixed, every squad in this tournament has a generous sprinkling of players from those major domestic leagues.

That is hardly new: it has been the case for two decades. But when they are augmented by a generation of tactically smart, quick-thinking coaches who understand how to harness the qualities taught abroad in a short preparation time, perhaps it heralds the next step. “The gold standard in the world,” is how the Japan coach, Hajime Moriyasu, referred to European football before defeating Spain. The Japanese game has had strong links with Germany, in particular, for many years.

On one level, such assessments breed discomfort: the instinctive thought is that Asian and African sides should not feel compelled to eschew their own styles in deference to theories honed in Manchester, Munich and Madrid. Homogenisation should not be the only way. But that is where football has long been headed and it becomes more palatable if the “European” benchmark is seen as a global one, practised by players and coaches from across the world, that happens to have taken hold there.

South American teams have long trodden a successful balance between what works locally and abroad. But this has been an unprepossessing World Cup for Conmebol so far, only two of their teams progressing. That has happened only twice before. Brazil and Argentina both began the tournament with convincing claims to go all the way but, even if Ecuador and Uruguay would both have qualified with four points in a different year, there are no support acts in the knockout stage.

Again, those fine margins: seven of the eight groups contained a team that missed out despite recording a win and a draw. It means nobody has too much cause to fret; if hitherto unheralded outposts are expressing themselves more volubly now, it simply means this tournament is doing the job it should. And even if Europe has only twice been represented more thinly than this in a last 16, a 50% share of the places still tells a tale.

For all the analysis and grasping for reasons, on Saturday night an Australian striker called Mitchell Duke from the Japanese second-tier side Fagiano Okayama will have had reasonable cause to believe he can outgun Lionel Messi and Argentina. Maybe that, more than anything else, speaks of the breadth that lies in front of us.

Source : TheGuardian

The post Diverse World Cup knockout stage a leap forward for Africa and Asia appeared first on Tashkent Citizen.