CRUNCH TIME BEGINS FOR UNDER-19

Hosts Thailand, Australia, China and Korea Republic will battle it out at the Rajamangala Stadium in Bangkok.

“This is an important warm-up for us, Sure we will be missing four or five players but I believe that we have a strong squad which will do well in this meet. The team has been playing together for the past year and we will be anxious to test our team against Australia, who are in our group.” – Chuchart Puentiang, team manager of Thailand

“We are using this tournament to finalise our team. We have been hard at work for the past three months and we went to Japan four weeks ago, We played four matches there and we hope that we can keep the momentum for this championship. – Simon Roberts, team manager of Australia

“We are grateful to the AFF for organizing this tournament. We have been preparing this team for the past year. We are using this championship to finalise the combination and probably the final 20 players for Saudi Arabia.” – Zheng Xiong, team manager of China

“We left behind some of the professional players, so this meet will be important for the players who are here to show their worth. They need to be in top form to prove to the coach that they can play well and represent Korea Republic. It will be an important test in the run-up to Saudi Arabia.” – Hanjin Chong, team manager of Korea Republic