By Samindra Kunti
May 30 – Six-time champions Argentina suffered a shock group stage exit from the U20 World Cup in South Korea. Favourites France marched undefeated into the round of 16, with both Venezuela and Zambia impressing in the group games.
France registered a perfect record to progress to the knockout phase of the World Cup beating Honduras, New Zealand and Vietnam without conceding a single goal. The French will meet Italy in the second round.
African champions also Zambia impressed. They defeated Portugal and Iran 2-1 and 4-2 respectively to qualify before losing 1-0 to Costa Rica. In South America all eyes were focused on continental champions Uruguay, but Venezuela have perhaps impressed more. They dispatched Germany in the tournament’s opening game 2-0 before hammering Vietnam 7-0 and defeating Mexico 1-0. Argentina, South America’s perennial giants in age-group competitions, crashed out losing all three group games.
Venezuela were also the first team to qualify for the quarter-finals as an extra-time header from Yangel Herrera was enough to see off Japan and booked a historic place among the last eight.
England will meet Costa Rica in the second round and Zambia encounter Germany.
“We came here to qualify, we’ve achieved that going through top of the group, but we’ll keep our feet on the ground, because we know it means nothing going into the last-16,” said England coach Paul Simpson.
“My intention when we came into the tournament was to try and get through the first three games of the group by having as many players as possible sample what it is to play in a World Cup finals game,” explained Simpson.
The English played against hosts Korea to a capacity crowd of 36,000 in Suwon, but crowds at the tournament have been sparse with locals not taking to matches not involving the hosts.
Debutants Vietnam did get strong support and 2,000 of their fans witnessed a historic draw with New Zealand that gained the country’s first ever point at a major FIFA tournament. “We’re proud of what we’ve done in our first World Cup,” said Vietnam forward Tran Thanh said. “We’ve also learned a lot from professional players playing in this tournament at a very high level. It would have been better if we scored at least one goal here, but in any case, I think it was good for us to motivate our next generation in the future.”
Vanuatu, another World Cup debutant, lost all its matches, but gave a good account of themselves, with narrow defeats against both Mexico and Germany.
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