Under-17: South American tournament

Well...another tournament in which the Albiceleste will be involved.

I´m talking about the U-17 South American tournament which will also qualify teams for the U-17 World Cup in Korea and the Panamerican Games in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil).

What I´ve heard was that Miguel TOJO is training with the boys in Ecuador (host of the tournament) and that Hugo "I´m happy with the tie even though I could be out of the Olympics" TOCALLI will fly there today to take command of the group that will make its debut on Monday against Paraguay.

The first four teams will qualify to the World Cup in Korea to be played from August 18th until September 9th, 2007.

There´ll be two groups of 5 teams each and the first three from Group A and B will advance to the final round in which every team will play against its 5 rivals and the champion will be decided by total points obtained in that final round (same system they used for the U-20 tournament in January).

Argentina will play in Group B and will be joined by Colombia, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela.

Group A will be formed by Brazil, Ecuador, Perú, Bolivia and Chile.

Bananito will be the tournament´s mascot (see picture):


The Under-17 South American tournament was first introduced in 1985 with the idea of creating a regional competition to qualify teams to the then newly-born U-17 World Cup. The first three editions where played by U-16 players.

Argentina won the first edition by beating Brazil in the final. But the boys in yellow are the winningest team in this competition: they took home 7 out of 11.

Argentina won 2 times (1985 and 2003), while Colombia and Bolivia each won in one opportunity.

Will try and investigate a little bit about our players in search of a possible new star for the future.

And of course we´ll follow all the action here in this space!

Am I missing something here?

Oh...yeah! Of course...here it is:

VAMOS ARGENTINA!