New Zealand Men's U-17s

Thanks, just now reading write up on the NZ Football site.

Stamenic, Bright, Taylor, Simpkin, van Hattum

Wilson, Old, Lobo, Strong, Garbett, Naicker.

Would have been: Taylor / Naicker, Simpkin, Strong (order my vary) / Wilson, Bright, Stamenic, Lobo / Old / Garbett, van Hattum

When I mentioned that we played Mexico in a friendly today at lunch at a vegetarian club I run for students at Canterbury University, Mexican student Adrian (whose family have immigrated here) said that his cousin (son of his mother's sister) Gabriel Martinez played.

Small world.

Adrian is from Guadalajara and his cousin Gabriel is in the reserve/youth side at Chivas.

New Phoenix recruit Ulises Davila is also from Guadalajara and started his career at Chivas.

Some local connections in the Solomons side with some players based in NZ:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_FIFA_U-17_World_Cup_squads#Solomon_Islands

Raphael Lea'i,  Wellington Phoenix Youth

Leon Kofana, Wellington Phoenix Youth

Charles Mani, Glenfield Rovers

Coach Stanley Waita is a former Waikato FC player in our Premiership.

That'll be a baptism of fire for them in the same group as Italy, Mexico and Paraguay..... 

Small world indeed. Considering popn of Mexico is around 130 Million, you would get long odds on that happening!

A proper 1st cousin too. In the Latino world a 'cousin' can often be a 3rd cuzzie or greater distant relative.

Know very little Mexico geography - but I'm pretty sure the Guadalajara region features heavily in Netflix's "Narcos Mexico". 

Fingers crossed the boys do SI and Oceania football proud.

+ Randall, Hamilton, Jelacic, Hillis

Big loss to Argentina this morning. 

Argentina very good. We started poorly. A few changes from previous game, some injuries apparently. Change in formation as well.

Some positives but Argentina in a different class

So what is a big loss?

Thanks for the update ClubOranje, can you provide a starting 11 and are we playing a 3 4 3 or some other formation?. Who are the most likely starting 11?.

Not sure the lineup for this game. Don't even know formation really, but 1 up top.

Think it was 8-1. NZ Football might have a report later.

Van Hattrick scored for us.

I'd guess for Angola we'll line up similar to Mexico game, maybe 1 or 2 changes.

Thanks for the update. At the end of the day it’s only a warm game and I doubt Angola will be at that level, but I can’t say the same when it comes to Brazil!.

Lineup

Looking forward to Angola...

New Zealand v CAF sides at Fifa U-17 World Cups

Expect the locals to also get behind, their fellow Portuguese speaking Angolan 'little brothers'.

Actually a 7-1 loss.

https://www.nzfootball.co.nz/newsarticle/83392

Didn't realise the 2 warm up games against Mexico & Argentina were in Buenos Aires, not Brazil.

See they got in the obligatory visit to Boca Juniors 'biscuit tin' stadium.

ClubOranje wrote:

Lineup

Was supposed to be a pic of lineup...

Here’s the goal instead...hooe

NZ goal

Argentina FA going with 8-1 and listing 8 scorers.

Mother of one player posting on FB that it would be nice if the team trained together more.

Just watched the game. Argentina were good, but not 7 goals better than us.

1st half goals were all soft/defendable.

Giveaway after a backpass, fail to defend free kick, poor defence of corner, soft penalty - hung a leg slightly, striker made sure he fell over it.

Second half had two good goals Argentina made, other two they took advantage of misplaced control or passes in the back third.

Basically need to be more focused at set pieces and not give cheap possession away.

At least the goal we did score was class. From what I’ve seen we have two quality keepers, two defenders, one or two quality holding midfielders and one quality striker. Leaves a few gaps on the team sheet. 

26 hours out from first game.

Kick off 12:00 midday, Sunday N Z summertime

8:00pm Brazilian local time

Here's a preview of the lineup. Initials only, as it's not officially released yet

(Formation may vary)

                X.X

      X.X    X.X    X.X

X.X       X.X   X.X      X.X

                 X.X

         X.x        X.X

Initials disguised as team sheet is still confidential ;)

#brotherhood

Me too, but he's on the bench for this one

I have a couple of spare tickets if anyone is near Brasilia...

PM me

0-1 down already after 4 mins...look very slow compared to Angola 

Good to know that a goalkeeper can push a player to the ground in the penalty area and not concede a penalty even with VAR...??

VAR is pointless if this doesn’t result in clear penalty

shocking call. It was clear and blatant. The ref needs to be reviewed after that and dropped.

great effort that!!

Why would you dive, then get in the refs face and signal for the VAR to confirm that you did in fact dive?  Very odd.  Lucky not to get a second yellow for signalling for VAR.

own goal sucks.

Except for the keeper we were second best all over the park.

Jose did not look like he had a clue with regard to tactics

I thought a poor performing U17's was all Hay's fault

Very poor performance comes back to selection and tactics.Its very easy to say we are going places when we qualify through Oceania then come up against technically better opposition once we get to the world cups.Still two more games to show some improvement  from this game.Oh and by the way the ref was crap 

Very disappointing when we have made such strides in age groups recently. Looked like they were always playing catch up and if only a fraction of the 20 plus shots were on target we would have been staring down the barrel of a big number. Some players look out of their depth at this level, lets see how the remaining 2 games go, but after that I am worried.

We were pretty shark and it shows that not all of our best U17 players have been chosen for this tournament either. 

Name a few.

Well for a start how did players playing on Cap 1 make the squad over Central league players for a start