Youngsters Getting in Gear

The Tunisian Football Federation just named the players who will represent their country at the U 17 World Cup that will take place in South Korea later on this month. The team qualified for the tournament by taking fourth place at the 2007 African Under-17 Championship in Togo. While I never managed to see any of the games, Tunisia lost in the Semi Finals to an incredibly robust Nigerian team. When I say incredibly robust, I actually mean players that were probably above the age limit. These guys were huge. I know that size isn’t always a telling factor when it comes to age but it gets deeper. During the tournament I downloaded and watched a show from Tunisian TV that detailed our run through the tournament.

At some point one of the technical staff says that when they asked to see the birth dates of the teams they would be playing against, something strange popped up. There were 6 or 7 members of the Nigerian team (I can’t remember the exact number) who were all born the same year, the same month, and the same day! Now thats timing people. I wish I still had this video but I have since reformatted my computer and I can’t locate the episode on the net (it was on a Tunisie-Foot Forum… too bad that site is proving quite difficult to navigate). I know such statements are a lot more powerful when backed up by evidence but alas I have none. On second thought, even if I had the video it wouldn’t do most of the readers much good because it’s all in Arabic. There is some interesting footage of the Nigerian team at the pool though (with closeups on the muscles of the jacked players to drive the point home). In interviews following their 2-0 defeat, the Tunisian players were adamant that some of their adversaries had to be older than 17. Some of them still had a sense of humor though. One player looked into the camera and said: “Hey Fifa, you gotta help us out here! It felt like I was playing against my dad!” Thats translated from Arabic of course… Anyways, you’ll just have to take my word for it….or not. Not accusing anyone, simply relaying what I watched on this particular show.

In any case, our boys are in the U-17 World Cup and that is what is most important. Here is the list of the players and their respective Tunisian clubs. Over the course of my time here at the blog I will try to profile some of our big clubs but for now the names will have to do.

Espérance : Habib Tounsi, Sadok Karoui, Ahmed Mejri, Mohamed Ben Azouz, Rafik Dkhil, Sadok Arbi.
Club Africain : Mohamed Ali Souidi, Bilel Ifa, Slim Marzouki, Seïf Akrimi, Nour Hadhria, Medji Mekhzoumi
ES Sahel : Mossaeb Sassi, Allaâ Abbès, Maher Jaballah.
Stade Tunisien : Youssef Masakni, Mohamed Wazzani, Oussama Boughanmi
AS Ariana : Khaled Ayari.
Jendouba Sport : Atef Dkhili
JS Kairouan : Hamza Tlili.

After having completed training sessions in Syria and Switzerland the team is back in Tunisia and will face its Lybian neighbor on August 7th in Grombalia. After that it’s off to Germany where they will play a couple of youth teams before arriving in South Korea on August 13th. Our first game is against Belgium on the 20th. According to Fifa our most dangerous player is Nour Hadhria so watch out for him. Hopefully him and a number of other kids impress and rep Tunisia to the fullest. I can’t wait…