Did you know there’s a FIFA Under-20 World Cup on later this month? Well, mate, you do now. They did the draw a little while back and this week the squad was named… a pretty strong squad at that. The last tournament, you’ll remember, was held in New Zealand back in 2015 (they do these things every two years or else the jokers get too old too fast and miss out – it’s U20s after all) but this one… this one’s being hosted in the great nation of South Korea. Within nuclear range… but no politics with our football, please.

The U20 All Whites side will face Vietnam, Honduras and France in their pool. Obviously you know which team is gonna be the most feared there, but this is youth footy and while the traditional powerhouses still tend to have the best resources, they don’t always pick the best teams or perform the best. Argentina came to NZ in 2015 led by the majestic Angel Correa, a guy who two years later is a regular for Atletico Madrid… but they didn’t even make it out of the group stage that tourney. New Zealand did though, the oldest male team from Aotearoa to make do so at a FIFA world tournament.

	QL	P	W	D	L	GF	GA	KO's
All Whites	2	6	0	3	3	4	14	0
Football Ferns	4	12	0	3	9	7	29	0
Men's Olympic (U23)	2	6	3	2	4	2	12	0
Women's Olympic	3	10	2	1	7	6	17	1
Men's U-20	4	13	1	3	9	10	22	1
Women's U20	5	16	4	3	9	22	36	1
Young All Whites (U17)	7	24	3	5	16	13	78	3
Young Footy Ferns (U17)	5	15	2	1	12	15	37	0

(Where QL = tournaments qualified for and KO = knockout rounds reached)

Yup, our record at these things is rather awful – the U17 fellas are the only NZ team who’s made multiple knockout stages, they also have a World Cup coming up later in the year. Good for them, best wishes and all that.

But while the U17s are an important step on the ladder, it’s telling that the best players at 15 or 16 are rarely also the best ones at 26 or 27. The first time New Zealand made an U17 World Cup was in 1997 and in their third game there they were fustigated 13-0 by Spain. Of the eight goal scorers that day only two of them even have Wikipedia pages and neither of those guys ever played a full international. For New Zealand, there’s clearly less emerging talent to overtake but yeah, still.

The U20s though, by that age most lads have already got professional contracts. That can mean conflicts of interest (there’s a kid at Jeremy Brockie’s SuperSport United team in South Africa who was pondering whether to miss the end of his club season for this comp or not – Teboho Mokoena, his name is, and he was selected in the end) but it also means that plenty of the players we see have genuine futures ahead of them. Best take a look then.

First thing that sticks out is the five full internationals that have been selected. Clayton Lewis is captaining the team, the Auckland City midfielder having emerged as a favourite of All Whites boss Anthony Hudson and he’s almost certain to follow this tour with a trip to the Confederations Cup. Geez, he’s a busy lad. Funny to think he’s only 20 but yeah nah he had his birthday back in February. Lewis and his 8 international caps are joined by Logan Rogerson (3), Henry Cameron (2), Dane Ingham (1) and Moses Dyer (9), the latter two also a shot at that Confeds Cup side.

Lewis, Dyer and Noah Billingsley are veterans of the 2015 U20 World Cup squad, as the three lads from that team to be born in 1997 they’re still eligible and they get the privilege of being senior players this time around. As for the whole progression through the ranks thing, several of these lads were a part of the 2015 U17 World Cup side which made the Round of 16 in Chile only to lose 6-0 to eventual winners Nigeria. Several? 11 of them, actually. Almost half the squad: Michael Woud, Jack-Henry Sinclair, Sarpreet Singh, Connor Probert, Logan Rogerson, James McGarry, Joe Bell, Luke Johnson, Hunter Ashworth, Callum McCowatt and Lucas Imrie (who scored the injury time goal that got the NZ17s to the knockouts).

Most of them were also a part of the team that swept the Oceania qualifying tournament last year so you can tell that there’ll be a lot of familiarity here, a pretty established team from the get-go. There’s no Wanderers side to build the team around like last time but that shouldn’t be a problem.

Also exciting is the high proportion of professionals in this squad. Dane Ingham jumps in having made his full international debut at the first opportunity against Fiji in the All Whites’ last game. The Brisbane Roar fullback projects to be an important player for Uncle Huddo and therefore an even more important player for Great Uncle Baze. Joining him are three folks based out of England. That they got Blackpool midfielder Henry Cameron to sign up for this is awesome, he’s not been quite the same since that ACL injury he suffered on All Whites debut which cost him about nine months of his career but he’s back playing now. Short on match fitness, this will also be an open audition for the Confeds Cup, probably. Always like a young player with something to prove.

Michael Woud is another in England, he plays in the Sunderland system an age grade below Sam Brotherton who was a kiwi star of the last U20 WC. He’s been involved in wider training squads with the All Whites before and all things breaking even he oughta be the next in a long line of quality goalies that our country keeps finding. Woud will be the definite numero uno, ahead of NZ-based Cameron Brown and Conor Tracey who are the other two glovemen. Then we have Myer Bevan, who currently chills with the Nike Academy in England, a fairly prestigious corporate programme whose most famous graduate is probably Aussie Tom Rogic of Celtic. Bevan was the top scorer in Oceania qualifying.

There are five blokes who are based out of America. Defender Hunter Ashworth is with the University of San Francisco, he’s never lived in NZ but his dad’s a kiwi and the family’s been to visit plenty of times over the years. He was one of the U17 grads so no mercenary either, but with a name like Hunter it’d be improper if he didn’t have an American accent to go with it.

Joe Bell used to play with the Welly Nix, now he’s at the University of Virginia as of January this year. Connor Probert, meanwhile, is at the Uni of Kentucky where the Aucklander’s in his second year. Probert scored three times playing every game for the Wildcats in 2016 as an attacking midfielder. And then a couple more American-based strikers. Noah Billingsley scored a couple of goals as a freshman playing surprisingly good minutes for UC Santa Barbara – the same uni as Tony Lochhead and Mike Boxall once went to. Noah’s first goal for UCSB, funnily enough, came against Loyola which is where Lucas Imrie calls home… although not yet because he’s only been recruited for the upcoming season.

As for the Wellington Phoenix chaps, Sarpreet Singh, Jack-Henry Sinclair, Logan Rogerson and James McGarry make for an exciting quartet. Sinclair is the only one who didn’t feature off the bench for the senior team this past season. The rest of these buggers are all based at kiwi clubs. For now, anyway.

(Quick question: why is the above video hosted on the channel of NZF’s ‘Communications & Media Manager’ and not the organisation’s own official channel?)

Comparing the qualities of the last U20 WC team and this one, the 2017 edition could definitely use a bit of the defensive class that its predecessor had with the likes of Brotherton, Bill Tuiloma, Deklan Wynne and a couple others. However the 2017 edition also arguably boasts a more impressive frontline. Shame we can’t combine the two… oh no wait we can. Just give it a few years with the national side. Huddo loves a promising young talent after all (as do we all, to be fair).

And to be honest, stacked defences have always been a trait of NZ sides at major tournaments. We usually have a few Ben Sigmund types in there but we don’t tend to have a Henry Cameron or a Sarpreet Singh, let alone a Meyer Bevan banging goals in against youth teams from some of the finest clubs on the planet in Nike Academy friendlies (if they’re sponsored by Nike then they’ve probably got a link somewhere in the chain). Which gives this team a potential element that we tend not to see: goals. Rather than kicking about for a 0-0 or 1-0 result, we might have a team that can put multiple footies in the net, imagine that! Considering that half of the goals the NZ Men’s U20 team has ever scored at World Cups came in that 5-1 win over Myanmar last time… that’s a pleasant thought.

We’ll have to wait and see if that attacking nature is: A) cultivated by manager Darren Bazeley and B) good enough to maintain against the best young footballers on the damn planet, but that’s all part of the fun. The team flew out on Tuesday and should be in China, where they’re having another preparation camp, by the time you read this. They’ve a friendly against Mexico and another against a local team before the real stuff begins in less than two weeks. The wider squad’s already been in training for a while now. Exciting stuff.

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