The Junior Matildas also qualified for the knockout stages of the 2019 AFC U16 Women’s Championship in Thailand before suffering closer defeats at the hands of North Korea and China PR. The Young Socceroos’ and Joey’s (of whom Morgan also serves as coach of) last continental hitouts arrived during their successful qualification for the subsequently postponed 2020 AFC U19 Championship and 2020 AFC U16 Championship. The Young Socceroos also played a series of friendlies against European club academy sides in early 2020.
Though still waiting for official word from the AFC, Football Australia sources are confident that those tournaments won’t be cancelled due to COVID but, instead, postponed to later in the year. Such a change may work in Australia’s favour, though, given the current quarantine restrictions that exist upon entry to the country. Citing the pandemic, the Bureau of the FIFA Council announced the cancellation of the 2021 Men’s U20 World Cup and Boy’s U17 World Cup on Christmas Eve, awarding host nations Indonesia and Peru the rights to the 2023 iterations in their place. Nominally, the AFC Championships for those age groups are still pressing forward - the U19 version set to kick off on March 3 in Uzbekistan per the federation’s most recent official statements - however, sources have cast significant doubt on that tournament going ahead at that date, if at all.
The same goes for any attempted early-year staging of the U16 iteration, which the AFC has yet to officially re-schedule. Adding further frustration, on Friday reports emerged that the Japanese government had determined that the Tokyo Olympics - which both the Matildas and Olyroos have qualified for - will have to be cancelled because of the coronavirus. The Japanese government and International Olympic Committee has since strongly denied the reports. The Young Matildas’ most recent continental matches came at the 2019 AFC U19 Women's Championship, where they advanced to the second round of the tournament before suffering heavy, back to back defeats against Japan and South Korea.
“Domestically, we’re looking at utilizing the elite game’s process and trying to refine that process to make it even better, ” Morgan told SBS The World Game. “There’s some modelling going on at Football Australia about how we can create short national team activity within our borders that avoids taking players away from club football as well. We’d try to fit things in at mid-week as much as possible in 2021.
Football Australia's plan for national youth teams disrupted by COVIDDue to the chaos wrought by the pandemic, Australia’s junior national sides were effectively sidelined for the whole of 2020 and, unfortunately for Australia’s generation next, the ongoing uncertainty around the globe seems set to continue to frustrate their opportunities to pull on the Green and Gold in 2021. Earmarked to be hosted in the Australian regional centres of Shepparton and Cessnock, respectively, a group of 2022 Asian Football Confederation (AFC) U20 Women’s Asian Cup round one qualifiers and a group of 2022 AFC U17 Women’s Asian Cup round one qualifiers had been scheduled for March and April.
After a near 12-month break that followed Olympic qualification, Graham Arnold's Olyroos most recently fielded a domestic-based squad for a nine day camp in Sydney that was accompanied by friendlies against Sydney FC and Macarthur FC. The ongoing saga has Morgan, who was named to his interim-TD post in August of last year, emphasising a focus on what Football Australia can do, not what it can’t, in the current landscape and adopting an approach that will allow Australia’s next generation to bounce back once the burdens of the pandemic lessen.
AFC U20 Asian Cup | the-AFC.com
FIBA.basketball: International Basketball Federation (FIBA)