FIFA U20 World Cup Korea 2017

Vanuatu came from 2 down to be 2-2 with Mexico, until a 94th minute goal gave the Tricolor the victory!

And England beat Argentina 3-0 #dontmentionthewar

Venezuela beat Germany 2-0!

Wow, great effort from Vanuatu. Always great to see an Island team being able to compete against international oposition

England's first win at the u20 world cup since 1997, scorer that day was Michael Owen!

Ronaldo Wilkins who scored for Vanuatu spent a couple seasons at the Nix academy at Scots College, so we can claim him.

Gooooooooooooooooooooal Zambia! Bit harsh on the Portuguese keeper, did well to get a hand to it but palmed it straight into the path of a Zambian player

2-0 Zambia!!

Portugal get one back in added time, probably too little too late tho. 2-1

South Africa take the early lead against Japan

Ecuador up 2-0 against the USA in quick time

USA pull one back, game on

Absolute shocker from Klinsmann Jr 

No left boot obviously.

USA rescue a point in stoppage time, 3-3.

ouch

Meanwhile England manage to score an own goal from the half way line! ??

Liam Jordan playing for Sth Africa v Italy at the moment

  

TAB offering Germany -5.5 goals vs Vanuatu at $1.80, they obviously expecting a bit of a massacre. Guess Germany needs to help their GD to try and get up to second?

Vanuatu coming back...Germany 3 Vanuatu 2 with 10 mins to go 

Fantastic effort by the Vanuatu boys, they can hold their heads up proud

Good to see another ofc side making an impact on the global stage, keep it up boys.

Saudi's equalise, dammit

Sounds like the Zambia/Germany game was rather dramatic.

Zambia win 4-3 in extra time. https://www.fifa.com/u20worldcup/videos/highlights...

Venezuela progress after extra time & Uruguay progress after swedish death strikes. Its a really interesting change to the shoot out system, it seem to put pressure on both teams much more equally.

What is the change?

It was the new ABBA system, Team A takes 1 penalty, then Team B takes 2 penalties, then Team A takes 2 penalties, then Team B takes 2 penalties & repeat until a winner found. It mimics the tie breaker system from tennis.

is that as exciting from a spectator point of view as the old system was? My initial reaction is no, but I haven't seen an ABBA penalty shootout yet 

The Portugal vs Uruguay shoot out hasn't been uploaded but there was one in the u17 Euro women's tournament the other day

The other system favoured the first team too much though, which is why it's been changed

Teams that took the first penalty won something like 60% of them, so from a competitive point of view it really needed a change. It is gonna take awhile to get used too but I do think its for the better.

It's a trade off for sure. That slight advantage vs the shootout being more of a spectacle for fans. I'm always on the side of it being more of a spectacle for fans (obviously, being as I am one). 

This is all theoretical from me though, as for all I know the ABBA system is just as (or more) exciting than the old one. In which case, great. 

What's the rationale behind it being fairer?

Atm its still a trial to see if its fairer. The traditional system puts much more pressure on the team going second, more often than not its them that are in the situation where they must score to keep the shoot out alive.

Team who kicks first wins the shootout 60% of the time. Thats significant enough that it's putting too much emphasis on the result of the coin toss.

ABBA is aiming to bring that back to 50%, so that the system doesn't favour one team over the other. 

The Uruguay/Portugal shootout was as exciting as any that I've seen. ABBA meant that both teams had chances to win the match on their own kick, and the pressure got to kickers on both teams equally as they missed/took poor pens.

England in the semis. Twenty-four years since they last got even to the quarters.  Doubt many people would have picked that based on history.

I have traditionally got much joy from perpetual English failure at any tournament but I'm glad to see them go well here for some reason.

And now in the final.

This must be a direct reflection of the FA changes to English born (eligible) player numbers in the larger squad of Premier league teams and their academy system.  (If I recall the changes correctly)

And now won it. Amazing game. Can't believe we've won a football World Cup! Didn't think I'd see it in my lifetime.

Yeah great stuff! Thought England were good value for their halt time lead, but seemed to run out of puff in the second half; still, they managed to guts it out, which was great to see. A very open free flowing game too.The peroxide haired ball player for Venezuela was very classy, and I liked the look of Onomah, Lookman, & Walker-Peters at left back(despite being a right footer!). Really though, England had several more excellent players in their line up/squad. Amazing what can happen when you send close to a full strength team for a change eh?  Now the trick is for the clubs to actually pick some of these guys, rather than buying overseas players. Problem is of course, that many clubs are foreign owned & managed, and they don't give two hoots about England's national team, whatever they say...

This