U19s qualify for the Knockout Phase of the Durban Cup, and a plea to Arsenal for more information.

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By Andrew Crawshaw

The Durban Cup is turning out to be a tournament that it is really difficult to keep in touch with.  The main mention of it so far on arsenal.com has been of a social visit the players made to a local school.  There is the shortest of reports on the game against Sporting here and another tiny piece on the opening match here.

Arsenal were drawn in group A with KZN Academy, Sporting Lisbon and Golden Arrows. The results have been…

	KZN	Sporting Lisbon	Golden Arrows
Arsenal	1 – 2	1 – 0	2 – 1
KZN Academy		4 – 5	2 – 3
Sporting Lisbon			0 – 0

So Arsenal win the group with 6 points from the three games while Sporting Lisbon and Golden Arrows are jointly in second place with 4 points each.

KZN Academy are last with the 3 points from the opening day win against Arsenal

Sporting Lisbon have been classified in second place.  Sporting and Arrows drew 0 – 0, Sporting had a zero goal difference (5 score and conceded), Arrows also had a zero goal difference (4 scored and conceded).  I guess the extra goal scored made the difference.

Against KZN we started with Keto (GK), Osei Tutu, Pileas, Da Graca, Mavididi, Nelson, Mourgos, Sheaf, McGuane and Da Silva.  Our goal was scored by Mavididi.

Against Sporting we started with Keto (GK), Pileas, Tella, Da Graca, Bola, Dragomir, Smith Rowe, Mavididi, Sheaf, Allende and Malen.  Our goalscorer wasn’t recorded on the tournament Facebook page which is about the only source of information that we have at the moment.

For the Golden Arrows game the Arsenal starting lineup was Thom Jinkerman (GK) – I know, I haven’t heard of him either I guess he is another trialist, Pileas, Tella, Da Graca, Bola, Dragomir, Smith Rowe, Mavididi, Sheaf, Allende and Malen. The goals were scored by Nelson and Mourgos.

In the other group with one more game to play for each team the situation is

	Fluminese	Rangers	SA U19
TP Mazembe	2 – 1		0 – 6
SA U19		3 – 2
Rangers	3 – 4

The South Africa U19 squad are qualified with a game to spare, one of TP Muzembe or Fluminese would look to be Arsenal’s opponents in the Semi-Final.

Well Done Arsenal – two good wins after a disappointing opening loss.

The tournament website is here.

Footnote from Tony: I am really not too sure why such limited information is made available about the under 19s and this tournament.  I can well understand the argument that the under 21s, when they play at the Emirates, get a crowd of only a few thousand, and so there can be said to be limited interest.

But I am not sure that this is quite true.  There are a lot of us who take considerable interest in watching the youngsters come up, and seeing if we can spot a new star really early on.   I only rarely get to see an under 21 game, because of the distance from my home to Islington, so any chance to see the young Arsenal players on TV is welcome.  And if not on TV, then at least more fulsome reports than we have been getting.

I can appreciate that there is a need to keep the hype under control – but then if it is kept too much under control, when a youngster does burst through there is surely a greater chance that he will find it harder to manage.

Just my thoughts of course, but I really would welcome a little more openness from Arsenal on this tournament and the progress of the young sides the club puts out, and how they do.

COYYG

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