…Morocco Meets Argentina in Grand Finale at Mid Night on Sunday.
The Coffee Growers of Columbia on Saturday night in Santiago Chile claimed their second Bronze of the world U20 Men’s football with a lone goal strike over Little Blues of France.
Strasbourg’s Perea Oscar playing at the outside left supplied the goal for Columbia in the 2nd minute of play from Hernandez pass while fans were still trooping into the stadium to make an encore of performance. Colombia won the Bronze in their best performance at the UAE 2003 games when they humbled soccer powers Argentina in the 3rd place match.
France fought back like a Trojan to equalize and at least push the match into penalty shootout as a shot hit the wood work making the 21,053 fans to hiss and in the 82nd minute Moustapha Debo floated a pass into the penalty box for France but a connecting header was too weak to get a goal. Ref Omar Abdulkadir Artan of Somalia flashed two late yellows to Colombia which one of them was for tripping a French Player outside the box and the other for time wasting.
France controlled the game with a 59-41% ball possession stringing 511-252 passes and a 3-2 corner kick advantage all yielding nothing as the Coffee growers played roughly having 18-10 foul calls and 4-2 yellow card flashed.
Colombia and France met six times mostly at their local Fra Toul Tournament where each country won two times with two draws scoring 21 goals of which 11 were from Columbia.
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They met once at the world cup when Colombia hosted in 2011. In Group A match involving Colombia, France, South Korea and Mali played on 31st July Colombia won 4-1. There was a twist at the tournament between France that came 2nd in Group A to Colombia.
In that 2011, Colombia beat Costa Rica 3-2 at R16 game while France piped Ecuador by a lone goal. Colombia was stopped at the quarterfinal by Mexico and France beat Nigeria 3-2 after extra time to move into the semis which she lost to Portugal 0-2 and France again lost the battle for Bronze 1-3 to Mexico.
For the records, France played 2-2 draw on 3rd June 2003 in the only friendly match played; beat Colombia 3-1 on 20th May 2006; won again 2-0 on 18th May 2010; played 1-1 draw on 10th June 2011 before the world cup encounter and lost 1-3 on 3rd June 2013.
Colombia is in their 11th appearances hosting in 2011 as reported and at UAE 2003 she won the Bronze beating Argentina 2-1.
France has never hosted this age group tournament but lifted the trophy at Turkey 2013beating Uruguay 4-1 on penalties after a goalless draw at full time but had at the previous edition in 2011 lost the Bronze to Mexico 1-3.
Tomorrow Sunday at midnight, Atlas Lions of Morocco will face Argentina in the grand finale where Ref Maurizio Mariani of Italy will be in charge after which FIFA will announce the awards of the 24th tournament.
For the first time, the 25th edition of the world U20 Men’s competition will be hosted by two countries in 2027. Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan will host 22 other countries from 6 confederations. Azerbaijan had hosted the world U17 female football before and would be debutantes at the U20 Men’s football tournament. Uzbekistan had reached the quarterfinal of the U20 tournaments in 2013 and 2015.
FIFA will fix the dates for the 2027 competitions in Chile and the draws will be made later after conclusion of the qualifiers.
Eniola Olatunji reporting for Patmos Media Line.
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