Iran Eyes Title at AFC U-19 Championship
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Iran will start the 39th edition of the AFC U-19 Championship on Friday with a match against Qatar.
The tournament will be held in Bahrain from October 13 to 30.
Iran has been drawn in Group C along with Qatar, Japan and Yemen.
Amirhossein Peyrovani’s team is scheduled to meet Qatar on Friday to bring an end to a 40-year title drought.
Despite being one of Asia’s traditional giants, Iran has not won the U-19 Championship since claiming four consecutive titles from 1973 to 1976.
They, however, had no problems qualifying for this year’s edition as winners of Group E with a 100 per cent record, and will be determined to do better than two years ago, when they were eliminated in the group stage after finishing behind Thailand, Myanmar and Yemen.
Iran’s senior side has enjoyed some excellent results recently and has strengthened its grip on being the continent’s number one side in the FIFA world rankings, and the pressure will now be on the U-19s to back that up.
Same as previous editions, the tournament acts as the AFC qualifiers for the FIFA U-20 World Cup. The top four teams of the tournament will qualify for the 2017 FIFA U-20 World Cup in South Korea as the AFC representatives, beside South Korea who qualified automatically as host. If South Korea is among the top four teams, the fifth-placed team will also qualify for the 2017 FIFA U-20 World Cup.
