2025 UEFA European Under-17 Championship

**elatedscum** · 19/05/2025, 5:39 PM

Originally Posted by tetsujin1979

The group stage draw for the U17 World Cup is being held this Sunday, the 25th
https://inside.fifa.com/organisation...mblem-revealed

Ireland have been included in the fourth seeds, along with every other country who's never qualified. If you look at the teams in the same pot as us, it's actually not that bad - there are some teams in pots 2 and 3 I'd much rather face than the other teams in pot 4.
Interestingly, no group can contain two teams from the same confederation
Having a look at the teams in the other pots - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_F...ld_Cup#Seeding - there's a reasonable chance we could finish second or third, and qualify for the second round.

Honestly we could win the group if we were lucky:

1st seeds:

Brazil and Argentina should be a lot better than us
Mexico, Senegal and Japan might be slight favourites against us, but wouldn't guarantee it
USA, Mali and Paraguay I'd have us as slight favourites
Qatar I'd back us to beat

2nd seeds are about half teams at about our level: South Korea, Chile, Colombia, Morrocco and half weaker teams like New Zealand, Honduras, Burkina Faso, Venezuela, Uzbekistan

3rd seeds: Ivory Coast and Tunisia could trouble us - but most teams shouldn't (Tajikistan, Indonesia, New Caledonia, Canada, Haiti, South Africa, North Korea, Panama, Costa Rica)

**tetsujin1979** · 25/05/2025, 5:50 PM

Draw for the first group stage is about to start, Ireland in pot 4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YffIjRIcKsA
(embedding disabled for video)

**Eirambler** · 25/05/2025, 6:29 PM

First ever 48 team group draw and they left us hanging - we were the 48th and final team drawn out.

Seems like a decent draw, though I'll admit I know nothing of the quality of the Paraguay, Panama and Uzbekistan Under 17 teams.

Felt like we were getting a stickier group involving South Korea, Mexico and Ivory Coast for a long time with the way that pot was being repeatedly skipped over in the draw.

**samhaydenjr** · 25/05/2025, 7:55 PM

Originally Posted by Eirambler

First ever 48 team group draw and they left us hanging - we were the 48th and final team drawn out.

Seems like a decent draw, though I'll admit I know nothing of the quality of the Paraguay, Panama and Uzbekistan Under 17 teams.

Felt like we were getting a stickier group involving South Korea, Mexico and Ivory Coast for a long time with the way that pot was being repeatedly skipped over in the draw.

Right now, the only way to gauge it would be based on how they qualified, I guess.
Uzbekistan won the Asian Cup in some style, scoring 17 goals and conceding only 3 over six games.

Panama topped a qualifying group, containing Dominican republic, Aruba and Grenada.

Paraguay came fifth in the South American championship

**Eirambler** · 25/05/2025, 7:56 PM

Panama is our first game. Again, I know nothing of their ability but would guess that's potentially the weakest of the three opponents. Win that and we should be in decent shape. Uzbekistan are a bit of a coming football nation in Asia, so may be decent enough and Paraguay I'm guessing will be OK too. Still, win the opener and we should be getting out of that group.