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The first ever match at the historic and newly refurbished Salt Lake Stadium in this FIFA U17 World Cup saw a clash between the two runners-up from the regional competitions - England, from the FIFA U-17 European Championship, and Chile, who travelled here through the South American U-17 Championship route. Sadly the match-up was anything but equal.
Chile conceded an early goal in the fifth minute and when they returned after the halftime, they let in another in the sixth minute from the start of play, virtually bottling all hopes of a win. Little did they know it would further spiral down and end up on the wrong side of a whopping 4-0 trounce.
Commenting whether England were too good or did Chile underperform, Chile's coach Hernan Caputto acknowledged the yawning chasm matter of factly. He simply said, "That were the two facts. They had a great match. We did not have a proper match. England have great potential. We are now thinking about Iraq and Mexico. We will give our best."
That the Young Lions were head and shoulders above the La Rojitas (The Little Red Ones), was put into perspective when Chilean goalkeeper, Julio Borquez, had to receive marching orders for an unfair challenge on forward Rhian Brewster.
Borquez had no other means of stopping the nagging and marauding attacks that manifested early resulting in a goal at the fifth minute of play. A routine question if the red card was deserved brought out this confirmatory quip that, "The red card is a fact. He is a really important player for us. We have good goalkeepers so we will take a call as to who will take his place in the next match in due time."
It was well understood that the Chilean coach would have his task cut out for him what with the likes of Phil Foden, Jadon Sancho, Brewster featuring in the start list. A question was raised in the air as to why did he not decide to go for man-marking. Caputto answered by saying, "We planned the match not only for Sancho but other players as well. He was planned to be controlled but things did not go as expected. The result was fair for England and they had a great evening."
Well that they did but even then the score is a surprise. Caputto did echo the same, “England was great tonight. We did not expect this big result. Individually we need to work more with players. We still have two matches and we have the time to recover. It's been many years since we played our last World Cup. We will work on our mistakes and will perform better in the next matches."
Talking about their next matches first with Iraq on October 11th at the Salt Lake Stadium and Mexico (Mexico vs Chile at the Indira Gandhi Athletic Stadium, Guwahati), Caputto mentioned, "We have been following Iraq. Probably it's a bit difficult to find information about them but we have done research on Iraq and Mexico. I am going to stay for the next match (Mexico vs Iraq). Players will go back to the hotel to recover. The next match is a very important match for us to see. The most important match for now. Because of the bad result today we need to see this game."
One can only hope that he saw the match with a wide and judicious eye.
