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All eyes on Adu Scouts, club reps gather for 10th U-17 World ChampionshipPosted: Tuesday August 12, 2003 2:43 PMUpdated: Tuesday August 12, 2003 4:32 PM
HELSINKI, Finland (AP) -- Perhaps hoping to find a diamond in the rough, or a player to rally fans around, hundreds of soccer club representatives, scouts and agents gathered in Finland on Tuesday for the start of the 10th biannual FIFA Under-17 World Championship. One of the players likely to draw the most interest is Freddy Adu, a 14-year-old forward who will take to the pitch for the United States. Already a standout because of young age, his prowess has resulted in a million-dollar contract with Nike. And, during three exhibition games in Britain before the start of Wednesday's tournament, he scored five goals. But there are others, too. And scouts are ready to watch as many matches as they need to find gold in hopes of history repeating itself, such as in 2001 when Carlos Tevez of Argentina, Diego of Brazil and Fernando Torres of Spain were tapped for the big time. The trio are top players for big clubs in their leagues -- Diego plays for Santos, Torres is with Atletico de Madrid and Tevez won the Copa Libertadores last year with Boca Juniors -- and each player is worth tens of millions of dollars. Sixteen teams in four groups start play for the title in Helsinki, Turku, Tampere and Lahti, with the last four playing for medals August 30 in Helsinki. France, which won the last tournament in Trinidad and Tobago in 2001, won't be around to defend its title, having lost to Spain in a vital qualifying round game in March. The draw for the tournament includes: • Group A, (at Helsinki): Finland, China, Mexico and Colombia. • Group B (at Turku): Argentina, Australia, Costa Rica and Nigeria. • Group C (at Tampere): Yemen, Portugal, Cameroon and Brazil. • Group D (at Lahti): South Korea, United States, Spain and Sierra Leone. The Helsinki games will be the first in a FIFA final competition to be played on an artificial pitch. The two best teams from each group qualify for the quarterfinals, with crossover pairings from groups A and B, and C and D, respectively. Nigeria, runners-up last time, and Argentina, which placed fourth, are playing in the same initial group. Despite that, the teams can meet in the final. Of the competing teams, Brazil and Nigeria have the best records with two wins and a silver medal each, and a bronze for Brazil. Argentina has won two bronze medals and also placed fourth once. However, with players 17-years-old and younger (born 1986 and later) the strength of the teams are not as predictable as the seniors. The FIFA U-17 title has six different winners in nine tournaments, while there are only seven winners in 17 tournaments at the full senior level in 72 years. For the first time ever a FIFA final will be played on artificial turf, in the 10,500 capacity Finnair Stadium in Helsinki. FIFA has supported the project with 250,000 euros (US$284,000) as the first step in developing a standard for artificial turf to make playing conditions better. The tournament will also continue the experiment of penalizing certain infringements of rules such as not observing the required distance of the defensive wall during free kicks. A problem in any age group tournaments -- national and club level -- has been the use of older players. For this year's tournament, the secretaries-general of the associations involved pledged to keep the players 17 and younger. But that hasn't stopped accusations that Adu is not 14. He moved to the United States from Ghana in 1997, and critics said his Ghanian records are not reliable.
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