{"id":10246,"date":"2018-01-05T19:11:52","date_gmt":"2018-01-05T10:11:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/?p=10246"},"modified":"2018-01-06T20:33:14","modified_gmt":"2018-01-06T11:33:14","slug":"afc-u-23-championship-preview-group","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/2018\/01\/05\/afc-u-23-championship-preview-group\/","title":{"rendered":"AFC U-23 Championship Preview: Group A"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

16 U-23 teams from across Asia will be strutting their stuff in China with various degrees of goals, dreams and aspirations. Some will be using this stage to showcase the wealth of talent at their disposal, some will be looking to leave a strong mark in their debut year, some will be looking to claim avenge unresolved failures from the last edition while some will purely focus on winning the AFC U-23 Championship.<\/p>\n

The stakes are high, the stage has been set and before the tournament officially kicks off on the 9th of January. Here’s a comprehensive preview of all four groups, starting with Group A!<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

CHINA<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Head Coach<\/strong>:\u00a0Massimiliano Maddaloni
\nPlayer To Watch<\/strong>: Wei Shihao<\/p>\n

As hosts, China will be determined to improve their record at the AFC U23 Championship, having not won a single point in their previous two tournament participants. This time around, the squad has enough quality to potentially spring an upset, given that they’ve been slotted into a tricky group. Shanghai SIPG’s Wei Shihao, who was absolutely brilliant in the Chinese Super League last year, will be their main man on the pitch.<\/p>\n

China did a terrific job in topping their qualifying group despite already being guaranteed a spot as the host nation. If they are able to replicate that form, they should be a difficult side to beat.<\/p>\n

Here’s what head coach Massimiliano Maddaloni had to say: \u201cFor us, this tournament is a good chance to play in China in front of our supporters. For the Chinese (senior) national team during the World Cup qualifiers, for every match the stadium was full, and that\u2019s something we want to repeat with the Under-23 team. We\u2019re looking forward to having a full stadium in every match, and the crowd can make it 12 players versus 11.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

Trivia!<\/strong><\/p>\n

China U-23 head coach Massimiliano Maddaloni was previously assistant to Marcelo Lippi while he was the boss of Guangzhou Evegrande between 2012 and 2014.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

QATAR<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"
Photo Credit: AFC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Head Coach<\/strong>: Felix Sanchez
\nPlayer To Watch<\/strong>: Akram Afif<\/p>\n

Qatar had a relatively strong qualifying campaign, having outclassed Turkmenistan and India before drawing with Syria to qualify as Group C winners. But the true strength of this squad lies in the fact that they’ve played together as a unit for some time now. The core of this squad also featured in the 2016 AFC U23 Championship, where they finished fourth and they’ve continued improving as a unit since then.<\/p>\n

Ahmed Moein may be the household name but keep an eye on Afif Akram, who has improved tremendously since joining KAS Eupen on loan from Villareal, last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a new generation, we have a new national team. We are a mix of the Olympic team and the first team and at the Gulf Cup and in the AFC Asian Cup in the United Arab Emirates, we will see what we will do there,” <\/em>Akram\u00a0said.\u00a0“But the first thing is that we want to win the AFC U23 Championship for Qatar, and secondly to do it for us as players and for our families.<\/em><\/p>\n

“For the players, we want to win so we can become the first team in Qatar\u2019s history to win two titles and then we can go on and try to do something with the Qatar national team, hopefully at the AFC Asian Cup in the UAE in 2019.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Trivia!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Captain Ahmad Moein was the Most Valuable Player of the AFC U19 Championship back in 2014.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

UZBEKISTAN<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"
Photo Credit: AFC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Head Coach<\/strong>: Ravshan Khaydarov
\nPlayer To Watch<\/strong>:\u00a0Zabikhillo Urinboev<\/p>\n

Uzbekistan are yet another side in this particular group who qualified as group winners. They sealed easy wins over Lebanon and Nepal to put themselves in a comfortable position heading into the final match against UAE. But just when most people expected them to pick up their first defeat, the Uzbeks pulled off a stunning 2-0 victory to secure their spot in the tournament.<\/p>\n

There’s a wealth of attacking-minded players in this squad but the focus will certainly be on Zabikhillo Urinboev, the man who was ever-present for them during the qualifiers.<\/p>\n

“Group A teams are somewhat similar in terms of strengths, potential and tactics,” <\/em>Khaydarov said. “We know enough about China and Qatar because we’ve played them in friendly matches in the past. Then you have Oman, which is also a strong team because they qualified by beating Iran in their group.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

“In general it’s difficult to pick a favourite for this tournament because I think every team has a shot at winning it. But it all depends on how well they’ve prepared for it and how they start their first match of the tournament.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Trivia!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Uzbek star Zabikhillo Urinboev was a joint-top scorer at the AFC U-19 Championship in 2014 with five goals in five games.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

OMAN<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"
Photo Credit: AFC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Head Coach<\/strong>: Hamad Al-Azani
\nPlayer To Watch<\/strong>: Jameel Al Yahmadi<\/p>\n

Oman are clearly the favourites to win this group and maybe even challenge for the overall crown, given the sheer amount of quality players at their disposal. From Mohsen Saleh to Moatez Saleh to Jameel Al Yahmadi, it’s difficult to imagine Oman to finding the back of the net in this tournament.<\/p>\n

The fact that they topped a group that featured Iran during the qualifying stages speaks volumes about this particular team. There’s a degree of feel good factor within the team too, especially given that several players from this squad also played in the recently concluded Gulf Cup, where Oman did well.<\/p>\n

Trivia!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Oman have never progressed to the knock-out stages of the AFC U-23 Championship. They exited the tournament after defeats to Jordan and South Korea in the group stages back in 2014, before completely failing to qualify for the 2016 edition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

16 U-23 teams from across Asia will be strutting their stuff in China with various degrees of goals, dreams and aspirations. Some will be using this stage to showcase the wealth of talent at their disposal, some will be looking to leave a strong mark in their debut year, some will be looking to claim avenge unresolved failures from the last edition while some will purely focus on winning the AFC U-23 Championship. The stakes are high, the stage has been set and before the tournament officially kicks off on the 9th of January. Here’s a comprehensive preview of all four groups, starting with Group A!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":90,"featured_media":10247,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[692,154,925,80,882],"class_list":["post-10246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia","tag-2018-afc-u-23-championship","tag-china","tag-oman","tag-qatar","tag-uzbekistan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/90"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10246\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}