Yemen’s U20 WC XIV – View from the dugout

We began with a relatively experienced group of 19 and 20 year olds, most of whom had played in the last U20 WC, and got what was seemingly a favourable draw. So how did we do against expectations?

Here’s my (admittedly very biased!) thoughts on how we did and where we might look to improve in future.

Yemen’s participation in U20 WC XIV has just finished – 4th place in an 8-team group in round 1, our best ever finish, combined with our best ever points tally of 20. We sit at 69 in the U20 rankings.

Taking you back to the start, the draw was fairly favourable, giving us a tight group with some obvious favourites but also the knowledge that we had a chance against any team on our day. The previous coach, Jokey-Schlumpf, had patiently built up many of our players’ experience during the last U20 WC, exchanging points in that one for (hopefully) points in this one.

The highlight was probably our 3-0 home win over Lubnan who, up till that point (just after the halfway stage) had been unbeaten when we surprised them with our offensive tactics and grabbed a surprise win. The 2-1 win in Peru was arguably a better result on paper but we had a lot of luck in that game and it was very much a case of ‘fortune favours the brave’ with our tactical choices. Our 4-2 win in Senegal was also a good result against a team that would have expected to beat us in their country.

Indeed two of the above wins, against Senegal and Peru, contributed to those two teams deciding at the halfway stage that they would call up a set of younger players to prepare for the next U20 WC. Peru had started off as one of the favourites for the group.

The low points? Well, our 3-2 defeat in Ghana created quite a bit of discussion in the forums as this time an extreme formation didn’t result in a win, although it did contribute to both our goals so I would argue that it was worth trying in a game that was expected to be close but where Ghana started as favourites. Whilst it didn’t seem so at the time as expectations were a bit lower then, the home draw against Hayastan might have been an opportunity to register an extra win.

Two defeats to each of Lietuva and Tounes were probably no less than expected – indeed they both finished in the top 3 although Lietuva, perhaps surprisingly, missed out to Lubnan in qualifying for the second round.

Overall, then I think we have much to be pleased about. We made a statement that, although a small HT nation, we can compete with much larger ones with a bit of planning. The extra experience was a massive help in our best ever finish, but ultimately the basic skills of the players weren’t good enough to give us a realistic chance of qualifying.

So what about the future? Well, the way to get better young players is (along with some luck!) to have more managers and, most importantly, more managers pulling youths each week. The number of managers in Yemen has gone up quite a bit over the past season or so, but the number of youths pulled each week hasn’t. Realistically, there is unlikely to be a significant increase in the number of managers until an Arabic translation of Hattrick is released.

Our next obvious goal would be to try to seriously compete with other teams to qualify in a future U20 WC – Lubnan only have 73 users but qualified from our group this time, following on from Brunei and Benin who each managed it in one of the two previous competitions – and, closer to home, Oman came within a point of doing so not too long ago as well. We’ll have to see though as I’m sure Lubnan have a lot more youths pulled each week even if they only have slightly more teams than us.

For now, the focus moves back to the NT which is steadily improving as Yemen matures as an HT nation and some of the older players reach their peak in HT. Although finishing 7th out of 8th in round 1 last time, a draw against group winners Scotland showed what can be achieved so let’s hope for better fortunes this time round!

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