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The AFC U-16 Championship 2020 is set to be one of the first international tournaments to be played in football post the COVID-19 pandemic. The biennial tournament will be played between 16 top teams of the continent in Bahrain later this year.
The U-16 tournament was scheduled to start on September 16 and end on October 3 as announced last year by the Asian Football Confederation, but is most likely to be postponed to the last week of November.
For the first time ever, the Indian Colts have qualified for three consecutive U-16 AFC Championship as they also qualified for the 2016 and the 2018 editions of the tournament. The young boys will be hoping to repeat and hopefully improve on India's performance in the 2018 edition of the tournament as they lost to South Korea in the quarter-finals owing to a late goal.
The U-16 Indian team topped their qualifying group for the AFC U-16 Championship consisting of tournament hosts Bahrain, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Bibiano Fernandes' boys scored 11 times and conceded a solitary goal in 3 matches getting two wins and a draw and topping the group on goal difference.
Head coach Fernandes was evidently very happy with his team's performances in the qualifiers but also warned them of the tougher challenges waiting ahead.
He said “We are eagerly looking forward to the draw. The boys gave a good account of themselves when they qualified above Uzbekistan that too in Uzbekistan in the Qualifiers. It’s time for them to show their character and gear themselves for sterner tests in the future."
The team also performed brilliantly in the 2019 U-15 SAFF Championships as they scored 28 goals and conceded none on the road to lifting the trophy. Shubho Paul, Sridarth Nongmeikapam, and Himanshu Jangra would be hoping to share the goalscoring responsibilities in Bahrain as they did in the SAFF Championships.
The 43-year-old head coach led India to a quarter-final place in the last edition of the AFC U-16 Championship and would be hoping for an easier draw for his team this time around. The draw for the AFC U-16 Championship will be held in Kuala Lumpur on Thursday, 18th June at 12 pm IST and can be streamed on the official AFC YouTube Channel.
Here are the designated pots for the qualified teams. Each group will have a team from one pot making it possible for India to face giants Japan/South Korea, Australia/North Korea and dangerous teams from pot 4 like China and Qatar.
Pot 1: Bahrain, Japan, Tajikstan, South Korea
Pot 2: Australia, North Korea, Indonesia, Oman
Pot 3: India, Iran, Yemen, Saudi Arabia
Pot 4: China, Uzbekistan, Qatar, UAE
AFC U-16 Championship: The permutations
The easiest possible group for India in the could be Bahrain (from Pot 1), Oman (from Pot 2), India, and Uzbekistan (from Pot 4). While a group consisting of defending and three-time champions Japan (from Pot 1), two-time champions North Korea (from Pot 2), India, and two-time champions Qatar (from Pot 4) could be the Group of Death for Bibiano's boys.
Out of the 16 teams competing for the coveted title, India is the only nation that has never reached the semi-finals stage of the AFC U-16 Championship. With the four best teams of the 2020 AFC U-16 Championship in Bahrain guaranteed a spot in the 2021 U-17 Championship, India will have to reach where they have never been before in the history of the tournament.
Here is the compilation of the 11 goals scored by India in the qualifying stages of the AFC U-16 Championship tournament courtesy the official Indian football twitter handle. To know more about the young stars of the future, watch the 147-second clip attached below.
