Today, Wednesday, the African Youth Football Championship, born in 2005, enters the stage of difficult and influential points, with a decisive round in determining the features and form of the competition for the two qualification tickets to the African Youth Championship, for which the position of the hosting country is still pending, and so far CAF has not determined the organizing country whether it is Egypt or Côte d’Ivoire. .
Today, in the qualifiers held in Ismailia, the Egyptian national team will meet its Libyan counterpart at five o’clock in the evening, while Algeria will face its Moroccan counterpart at eight o’clock, with both matches being held at the Suez Canal Authority Stadium.
Morocco leads the tournament with 6 points, followed by Tunisia with 3 points, then Egypt and Algeria with one point for each team, and Libya is in last place with no points.
Morocco’s victory gives it early promotion, regardless of the results of the next round, leaving the race between the rest of the participating teams for the second promotion ticket, and Egypt’s victory over Libya revives its hopes of remaining in the competition.
Two teams will qualify from the qualifiers if they are based in Côte d’Ivoire and one team if Egypt organizes them. The Pharaohs are working on engineer Hani Abu Rida, the candidate who won by acclamation to head the Jabaliya elections. A lot is said about Egypt’s victory in organizing the African Youth Finals in light of his influential relations in the CAF, in addition to the fact that Egypt’s file has priority. In terms of applying to host it.
The youth team is looking forward to reviving its hopes of passing the qualifiers despite the exceptional circumstances it is going through, which include a compressed preparation that did not exceed 14 days of training, especially since the qualifiers are an important station at the beginning of the term of the Brazilian Micali, who was contracted to build a strong Olympic generation for the Los Angeles 2028 tournament, which will begin. Its preliminary qualifiers will take place after about a year, similar to his previous Olympic experience in which he led the Olympic team to fourth place in the 2024 Paris Olympics.
The youth team trained in two groups yesterday and concluded its preparations for the match with Libya yesterday. A group trained in the gym, swimming pool and jacuzzi under the leadership of Dr. Salah Ashour, the rehabilitation and physical therapy consultant. They were the main players who played in the Algeria match, while the substitutes trained under the leadership of Mikali, the technical director, and his assistants, Ricardo, the general coach, and Alaa Abdo, the coach. Al-Watani, Moses, the goalkeeper coach, and Leonardo, the load coach, in the presence of Captain Islam Al-Shater, the national team manager.
Among the difficult circumstances that the team is going through and beyond the control of the technical staff is the absence of about 6 influential players from this generation due to injuries, most notably Mohamed Abdullah, Mohamed Ibrahim, Mohamed Hamed, Mohamed Raafat, and the very dangerous Selim Talab, a professional in Hertha Berlin, who was injured in the first minute of the opening match between Egypt and Morocco. So far, his replacement from CAF has not been approved.
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