{"id":25319,"date":"2016-05-27T21:41:48","date_gmt":"2016-05-28T04:41:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=25319"},"modified":"2016-05-27T21:41:48","modified_gmt":"2016-05-28T04:41:48","slug":"afc-u-16-championship-india-2016-group-a-preview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2016\/05\/27\/afc-u-16-championship-india-2016-group-a-preview\/","title":{"rendered":"AFC U-16 Championship India 2016: Group A [PREVIEW]"},"content":{"rendered":"

AFC – GOA, With Thursday’s draw for the AFC U-16 Championship India 2016 now complete, join the-afc.com as we take a closer look at the teams in Group A.<\/strong><\/p>\n

GROUP A
\n<\/strong>
\nINDIA<\/strong><\/p>\n

Qualified as: Hosts\/Runners-up in Group E (3rd best)
\nAppearance: 7th
\nBest finish: Quarter-finals (2002)
\nLast time out: Did not qualify<\/p>\n

Hosts India will be making their seventh appearance at the AFC U-16 Championship and will be hoping home advantage can help them better their previous best achievement in the tournament, when they reached the quarter-finals in 2002.<\/p>\n

Having failed to make it to the 2014 edition after finishing third in their group behind Kuwait and Tajikistan, the young Blue Tigers produced a better showing in the qualifiers this time around, booking their place in the finals as the third-best runners-up.<\/p>\n

An impressive 5-0 victory over Bahrain was followed up by a 3-0 loss to eventual Group E winners Iran before the South Asians secured second place with a 6-0 hammering of Lebanon, with Suresh Singh Wangjam netting a hat-trick to take his tally in the qualifiers to four following the midfielder\u2019s strike in the opening fixture.<\/p>\n

ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN
\n<\/strong>
\nQualified as: Group E winners
\nAppearance: 10th
\nBest finish: Champions (2008)
\nLast time out: Eliminated in quarter-finals (lost 4-2 on penalties to DPR Korea after 0-0 draw)<\/p>\n

Iran ensured participation in the AFC U-16 Championship finals for a tenth time, scoring 12 times with just one conceded as the 2016 qualifying Group E hosts finished top of the table with victories over Lebanon (3-1), India (3-0), and Bahrain (6-0).<\/p>\n

Since making their AFC U-16 Championship debut in 1996 Iran appeared in all but one of the following nine tournaments, finishing runners-up in 2000 before going on to claim their first title with a 2-1 defeat of Korea Republic int he 2008 final.<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s hopes of a second title ended at the quarter-final stage of the 2014 AFC U-16 Champions in Thailand, where they lost to eventual champions DPR Korea in a penalty shootout following a 0-0 draw of their last-eight encounter.<\/p>\n

SAUDI ARABIA
\n<\/strong>
\nQualified as: Group D winners
\nAppearance: 10th
\nBest finish: Champions (1985, 1988)
\nLast time out: Eliminated in group stage (bottom of Group D with two points)<\/p>\n

Champions and third-place finishers twice in the first five AFC U-16 Championships, Saudi Arabia have yet to repeat their success of the formative years of the competition – when they won the inaugural tournament in 1985 and claimed a second title in 1988 – bowing out of the last two editions at the group stage.<\/p>\n

The Saudis secured their place in the finals for a third successive AFC U-16 Championship by comfortably topping Group D, which had been reduced to three teams following the withdrawal of Pakistan.<\/p>\n

Five different players were on the scoresheet as the 2006 and 2008 quarter-finalists began their 2016 qualifying campaign with a 5-1 defeat of Group D hosts Bangladesh before booking their passage to India with an equally emphatic 6-2 triumph over Gulf neighbours the UAE.<\/p>\n

UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
\n<\/strong>
\nQualified as: Runners-up in Group D (4th best)
\nAppearance: 7th
\nBest finish: Runners-up (1990)
\nLast time out: Did not qualify<\/p>\n

A 6-1 triumph over hosts Bangladesh was sufficient for the United Arab Emirates to book their place in the 2016 AFC U-16 Championship as runners-up in Group D, which had been reduced to three teams following the withdrawal of Pakistan.<\/p>\n

After skipper Majid Rashid netted a hat-trick in the opening win over Bangladesh, the tables were turned on the UAE by Gulf rivals Saudi Arabia as they crashed to a 6-2 defeat to the eventual table-toppers but the Emiratis had still done enough to qualify to the finals as the fourth ranked of the group runners-up.<\/p>\n

Losing finalists in 1990 – finishing runners-up to Qatar on home soil in what was their tournament debut, – the UAE also made it to the last four in 2008 and the quarter-finals in 2002, again as hosts, and in 2010, which was the last time they took part in the AFC U-16 Championship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

AFC – GOA, With Thursday’s draw for the AFC U-16 Championship India 2016 now complete,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26307,"featured_media":25320,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,84,137,133],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c17-asian-competitions","category-c47-featured-news","category-irans-u16","category-c14-youth-teams"],"views":2402,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26307"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25319\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}