Yemen’s U20 WC XVI – A Golden Generation?

After Yemen's best ever U20 WC finish of 4th place four seasons ago, I decided to try to put together a golden generation to take the next step up from that and be in the battle for qualification. It didn't quite go to plan, but here's the view from the bench of how the last U20 WC and preparations for it went ...

So we have reached the end of another U20 WC. In the end a respectable points tally and final position of 6th, level on points with the team in 5th, but below where we might have hoped to end up at the start (although certainly above where we would have expected to end up with 6 matches to go!).

I led the team to 4th place two U20 WCs ago with a team with a few players who had played in the previous U20 WC and, whilst low probably even by Yemeni standards in terms of skills, that squad made up for it with their extra experience, albeit aided by a favourable draw. This led me to decide to run for election again on the basis of trying a golden generation with a full set of players who would benefit from experience in one U20 WC and then play for real in the second to see if we could take the next step up from 4th place and try to be a serious contender for qualification.

The preparation over the first season or so wasn’t ideal. The quantity and standard of youths being pulled wasn’t as good as I had hoped and, whilst faresar and I tried to put in place a list of trainers who could buy our players and be relied upon to train them well, we found that too many refused to pay the required transfer fee when the crunch time came and we notified them that there was a suitable player for them to buy. By the time of the main U20 WC, there were certainly a few stars but equally a few weak points in the team. It is hard to draw a direct comparison as the training changed in the meantime, but nevertheless the squad didn’t feel weaker than the one which had finished 4th two U20 WC’s previously.

The draw looked promising – a real giant in Germany and another big HT nation in Serbia but, whilst bigger nations than us, the rest of the group generally contained mid ranking nations against whom we would have a chance.

However, unfortunately it wasn’t to be. Our first match was away to Serbia and a good result would be important if we were going to look to be in the running for an outside chance of qualification with this golden generation. We went for an adventurous formation considering the opposition and surprised them, but luck went against us with us falling to defeat, despite even the Serbian manager admitting that his team got lucky.

The next match was just one to get out of the way in Germany and that left us with the remaining five matches of the first half of games against ‘beatable’ teams. Bangladesh edged a tight game with both defences well on top 2-0 with two late goals and suddenly we were struggling. The Maldives had started off with three wins, but we attacked them in our home match to try to put an end to that – we went ahead twice and were unlucky to lose 3-2. Further disappointing defeats followed to Bahrain and Cambodia, although sandwiched between them was the relief of a win at home to Paraguay – but at the halfway stage we were well adrift at the bottom of group.

The second round of matches started off with a 3-0 defeat to Serbia as we packed the defence but failed to hold out although another defensive performance against Germany did pay off as we only conceded one goal before scoring a late equaliser to stun the group leaders. That seemed to spark us into life and we made home advantage tell in the following match against a defensive Bangladesh which got us back into the pack of teams in our group. An edgy 1-0 defeat in the Maldives slowed our progress, but we reached 5th place in the group after a convincing 4-1 win over a Cambodia followed by a more fortuitous win over Paraguay.

We dropped to our final place of 6th after coming from 2 goals down to secure a 3-3 draw with Bahrain – perhaps our biggest impact on the top of the group being the late equaliser in the 83rd minute which meant that the Maldives qualified in 2nd place instead of Bahrain who would’ve secured 2nd place with a win over us. Congratulations to the Maldives on securing their qualification despite being a small HT nation and being in the top two of the group for most if not all the competition, commiserations to Bahrain who, as an equally small HT nation, snuck up almost unnoticed as the Maldives faltered in the second half of the campaign and almost took the glory from them.

We might have hoped to be up there competing like those two smaller nations, but unfortunately any hopes we had went with our wretched start. The experience of this golden generation certainly helped, but ultimately their basic skills weren’t good enough to make them truly golden. There were certainly some stars who have future NT potential – the likes of Al-Yaaruby in midfield, Al-Gafry and Al-Saighi up front and Nasser and Shushah on the wings amongst others – but we didn’t have a strong enough squad overall, particularly at the back. Luck was certainly not on our side in the crucial first few matches either with the matches against Serbia and the Maldives standing out as being ones where we deserved the wins and there were other defeats where we could certainly have got something out of the game with a bit more luck.

Looking to the future, we still struggle with a relatively small number of youth pulls in HT Yemen, although the skills of the players are certainly better for the next U20 WC and we did enough this time to be in a higher seeding pot so hopefully there is the prospect of a good U20 WC for whoever comes after me, although qualification is likely to be a distant hope without another golden generation attempt.

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