South American runners up, Paraguay may displace the European champions, Oranje of Holland as both teams file out for the first quarterfinal match of the 18th world U17 championship at 2030 hours of Sunday at Estádio Kléber Andrade, VITORIA-Brazil.
The Paraguans are currently top team scorers with hosts Brazil scoring 12 goals from 4 matches. They won three of their matches beating the Katukatus of Solomon Island 7-0 after a goalless draw with Mexico, piped Italy 2-1 and then stunned Argentina 3-2 in the round of 16 games.
Paraguay emerged from group F along with Mexico who will also be playing their quarterfinal game against Korea Sunday at midnight. Group F is the highest scoring group along with group B where Nigeria was and the group scored 26 goals.
Holland is coming from a goal shy group D that has least group goals of 17 along with groups A and E. Holland scored 8 goals and conceded 7. That is a weak team, for a good team score goals and concede minimal goals.
The team first did ‘shakara’ for USA slamming them 4-0, succumbed to Senegal 1-3, lost to Japan 0-3 but brought down the Golden Eaglets of Nigeria in an amazing 3-1 game. Hansen is their top scorer with 5 goals three of which he scored against Nigeria and 2 against USA.
Paraguay has the Garcete brothers and one unique thing is that nobody has scored two goals except these brothers. The team is resilient having won two games with come backs. Their scoring 12goals and conceding 4 means the attackers are working and the defenders are on top of their game.
From statistics, apart from ball possession of Ned 235 to Par 143, Paraguay looks better with shots on target of 28-23 and corners 18-16. That means the Paraguans can put them on pressure which may cause penalties, own goals or outright cheeky goals. The Para boys could be rough, they committed foul 58-53 times, bagged 9-7 yellows, no red card from both sides but the Ned boys were caught offside 4-3 times.
Historically, the European champs, Holland coming to the party for the 3rd time have a better performance of a Bronze won at world level in 2005 while Paraguay, qualifying for the 4th time could only boast of a quarterfinal level achieved in 1999. So Paraguay will be under pressure to achieve.
Current performance level gives the match to Paraguay but they will not bang in the goals as they did to our famous goal collectors, The Katukatus of Solomon Islands who were slayed 7-0. It will be delightful to see the Garcete brothers move on the pitch like a python pursuing a goat for a meal, very sleekly midfielder and attacker.
-ENIOLA OLATUNJI.
