Young Boyz hold Egypt

By Audley Boyd, Staff Reporter

Egypt's Hussein Amin (right) battles with Jamaica's Christopher Nicholas during their first round match of the FIFA Youth World Championship in Buenos Aires' Velez Sarsfield stadium yesterday. The game ended in a goalless draw. - Reuters

BUENOS AIRES:

ALLIEN Whittaker kept goal magnificently, Egypt's forwards shot poorly and the gods seemed to be smiling, and smiling broadly too, on Jamaica, as they escaped with a lucky 0-0 draw against Egypt in blistering cold, in their debut at the Under 20 FIFA World Youth Football Championship yesterday.

Whittaker, who made countless unbelievable saves, was drug-tested along with team-mate Sean Fraser afterwards, in accordance with tournament stipulations that two players from each team will be undergo random drug tests for each game.

During the contest, the Egyptians had a goal disallowed, missed a penalty after stopper Sheldon Battiste floored Ahmed Abou Moslem inside the penalty box at the 59th minute, and countless other chances as they had only themselves to blame for not winning.

"There was some proverbial luck and that is part of life, part and participle of life. We just continue to hope that that (luck) will come our way," said Jamaica's coach, Wendell Downswell, of their goalless finish in the feature game at the Jose Amaltifani Stadium in Buenos Aires.

"Overall we're satisfied, probably not in terms of the team being as efficient as we expected them to play, because you know with the tension and such and the butterflies. I think that the fact that we got one point from the game will build the confidence of the team," added Downswell.

"I'm not happy with the result of the match. We got many, many chances that we lost," said Egypt's coach, Shanky Gharib. "We were very much on top of the Jamaican team. They had all the luck, they were defending 90 percent of the match."

There are six groups and apart from the top two, the four best third place teams will make up the listing for the second stage.

For Jamaica to advance, they must improve significantly in all areas as they found it difficult to maintain possession for most parts, defended badly as Egypt got countless chances, and they could not sustain offence, despite creating three good scoring opportunities.

The Jamaicans players, led by Whittaker and a senior game by captain Shavar Thomas, fought hard but did not move enough to support each other or close down the opponent. They ended up giving away the ball consistently, many times with some long, aimless clearances in cruelly cold conditions under five degrees Celsius and very windy, which did affect their play as attested to by midfielder Damion Williams.

"I didn't perform as how I wanted because it's the first I was playing in conditions like this cold, my body numb up. Probably next time I'll do better. Everyone was arguing that it was cold, it affected us," he said.

All Jamaica's chances were created in the second half, one against the run of play and the others between the 60th and 70th minutes when they were enjoying one of their two good short spells. The Jamaicans also played well, but briefly, early in the first half.

When they were good in the second, a minute after Woolry Wolfe hit a free-kick from 20 yards way over the top, substitute Gordon, with an open angle inside the penalty area, took a pass off Keith Kelly and fired across goal at the 64th. It went to Nicholas, who completely missed the ball with a gaping goal that would not have counted anyway as the linesman had already raised his flag. The unmarker Gordon should have done better.

Jamaica will play their next game against Finland at the same venue on Wednesday at 2:00p.m. (12noon local time) and Downswell said:

"What we'll have to do now is to work on the defensive aspect of our midfield. We need to be much, much tighter in terms of our marking and the recovery of our midfielders."

Teams: Jamaica - (captain) Shavar Thomas, Allien Whittaker, Sheldon Battiste, Alex Thomas, Sean Fraser, Woolry Wolfe, Keith Kelly, Omar Daley, Damion Williams (Fabian Dawkins 65th), Adam Wallace (Craig Gordon 57th), Christopher Nicholas (Fabian Blake (88th).

Egypt - (captain) Reda Shehata (Gamal Hamza 76th), Mohamed Sobhi (goalkeeper), El Magd Abou, Hussein Amin, Mohamed El Atrawy, Mohamed Shawky, Wael Reyad, Mohamed El Yamany, Hossam Ghali, Ahmed Abou Moslem, Gamal Hamza.

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