2014 U-20 Women's World Cup pre-tournament talk:(Qualifiers, Final Draw, predictions)

[zeelaw]

What's the situation for our tickets? Have we got a section booked off?

[rob.notenboom]

What's the situation for our tickets? Have we got a section booked off?

We are supposed to be buying venue packs but no details yet.

I'm curious to see what the situation is after the group stage depending where Canada finishes.

[Vic]

I am most curious. Elaborate with sources please.

My source is conversations I've had and reading I've done in the past. I wish I could even source things I read yesterday. You can google it all, it's also been covered here and on CSN in the past.

Both countries have a history of age fraud. Politicians and FA heads from Ghana and Nigeria have flatly admitted it. There was a men's U17 not long ago where they MRI tested camps pre-tournament and most of the Nigerian and the majority of the Ghanian teams were denied. North Korean women's teams consistently rock youth tournaments but the only way they can qualify women out of Asia is doping (i.e. they are banned from Canada 2015). Still feel bad for the Aussies who played them a month before they were tested and caught and lost by a goal and missed out on the Olympics because of it.

Access to legitimate records in both cases is either very difficult or intentionally obscured. This was the reason for the evolution of FIFA's wrist bone-density testing, but they haven't come up with one for women yet. So given that there is no test, and that countries have demonstrated a pattern of behaviour when there is none...

[Vic]

Today we'll look at Finland. Not sure about the youth side but the full national women are known as Helmarit, the Pearl Owls.

Ghana will be athletic and likely old, but how formidable they are will be hard to gauge ahead of time. One thing is for sure, Korea DPR is coming out of this group. Their dominance in the younger ages is consistent. That leaves Finland and Canada to duke it out if Ghana can be tactically broken down.

Finland qualified out of UEFA as the fourth of four berths. Their record was:

Finland 1-1 Sweden (group #1)

Finland 1-0 Norway (group #2)

Finland 1-1 Germany (group #3)

Finland 0-4 England (semi)

They got behind on Sweden but shut the door and got the equalizer and held the Swedes to just that single shot on net in the entire game. Then they were well outplayed by the Norwegians but defended well and countered with a sucker punch. "We were quite lucky today, our goalkeeper played quite fantastic today. We got one or two chances and scored a goal" - Finnish coach Marianne Miettinen.

They Germans were already through when they faced the Finns and changed six players in their lineup and still held the Finns to one shot on net. The Finns assessed the Germans were weak on the counter and got a point out of it. The German coach Maren Meinert noticed the two Finnish forwards are quite dangerous and quick and was disappointed her team were already looking ahead and unfocused.

They went down hard to England in the semi (0-4) who played long ball back to front and three of their four goals came from it, with the fourth a PK caused by a long ball as well.

The English, the Germans and the French qualified strongly out of Europe, and outside of the Finland/Germany game all three punished opponents in their groups. That left room for a fourth which the Finns grabbed by big goals against Sweden and Norway and fortunate timing meeting a German team already through.

So they have some quality striking on the break and they're organized in the back and can defend against build-up but had difficulty in quick transition.

Finland had 21 players in camp January 14-16 with a staff of eight (four coaches, a fitness trainer and three therapists). They have another mini-camp May 6-9 where they'll play Sweden's U23s and then another longer pre-tournament camp with their full national team. They have 26 1994's, eight 1995's and two 1996's in their U20 pool.

Individual player bios are here:

http://www.palloliitto.fi/node/1519/uutiset

Four Finns made the squad of 22 in the EU Qualifying All-Star team: goalkeeper Vera Veris, defender Emma Koivisto, midfielder Julia Fell with the good left-foot and striker Juliette Kemppi.

The Finnish football tv site has a lot of video, I picked it up with a Finnish IP, it might be available outside the country: http://huuhkaja.tv

[rob.notenboom]

Wow, great report. Thanks for that.