Am I the only one who thinks this tournament is crap without the major European nations? (By which I mean England, France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands).
UEFA and FIFA have to get their stuff harmonized. U-21 in Europe v. U-20 in the rest of the world within under a month of each other... how were the Europeans expected to field two teams?
What apparently happened is the big teams elected not to send their 19 and 20 year olds to play on artificial turf in a lonely soccer outpost like Canada, and focused their efforts on the European tournaments, while sending their 17 and 18 year olds to qualify for this, which, of course, they didn't. Other teams didn't qualify for the UEFA tourney, so they focused on U-20.
As for Canada... there should be a rule that host countries should at least have qualified for the last two tournaments... they are just shamefully below the standard in this tournament. A testament to how little people regard the sport here.
Oh, and for the people complaining about the players going down... if you collide with someone at full speed, with no padding and fall on what is essentially concrete... it does hurt... a lot. I was really disgusted when the Canadian "fans" were booing an 18 year old boy for not getting up right away.
|