Austria keep their chances alive, Germany one win away from Canada, and a first victory for the Netherlands.
From the European qualifications there will be three teams that qualify for the final round to be played in Canada in May 2019. In this EUR2 group, the undefeated Germany are looking like they will win the group and take one spot, and then the winner of EUR1, which will be played next week in Moscow, Russia, will take a second spot. The remaining place will go to the best 2nd placed team. This will be decided by comparing their overall results, and if Austria can keep winning and maintain their good goal difference it will put them in a strong position for this.
Austria were comfortable winners in their game against Great Britain. They scored goals evenly throughout the match but were at times loose in defence and Great Britain took advantage of these lapses to score a few goals of their own. Austria´s Christoph Steiner was a standout player today being involved in 6 of their 10 goals, and is sitting at the top of the tournament points scorers board. For Great Britain, Kenneth Gray and Tom Jeffrey both scored their first international goals. Final score 10-3 for Austria.
Germany have not been the fastest of starters in their previous games, preferring to settle into the game before turning the pace up, but today the spectators hardly had time to sit down after the national anthems before they had scored their first with the clock at 00:17. Like Austria, Hungary will be setting their sights on being the best 2nd team in the EUR qualifiers and although winning matches is of course important, also keeping a good goal difference will also play a part. An 8-0 loss today won´t have helped them in this respect. Germany have participated in every Men´s U19 WFC and now need just one more victory to secure their spot for 2019. With matches to come against Netherlands and Italy they are certainly not yet guaranteed of qualifying but they have so far looked a step above the other teams in this group.
Netherlands beat the home team Italy 11-1 to take their first win of this tournament. They had a disappointing game yesterday against Austria but they rebounded well from that and worked hard for today´s result. It was a frustrating game for Italy, they had chances but things never seemed to go their way. Shots hit posts, loose passes got pounced on by the opponent and turned into goals, and they spent too much time with players on the penalty bench. The Dutch have several very good individual players but today it was their overall team work that was their strength. They passed well and supported each other in both attack and defence. In particular, their goalkeeper, Alessio Mura, had a great game and was a solid wall for the Dutch to build their play from.
Match statistics can be found here.
Photos are available on Flickr and match replays on YouTube.
