Nadi Arena (19/6/24)
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SportsTranscript
00:00If you fail in the final round, it's a failure.
00:12The 16-year-old football manager, Christopher Raj, seems to be challenging himself to make sure that Jorda Libera's team is able to qualify for the final round of the Asian Cup under 17 years from now.
00:23Yes, at the same time, it is a dream for the world that the 17-year-old team is able to be associated with the 16-year-old AFF competition in Surakarta, Indonesia, as a starting point for the related mission.
00:53And that is a very, very important target to qualify because we qualified last year and it's good to qualify back to back. That's a personal target for myself and I think Harvey also would agree with that to qualify to the final round of the AFC Under 17.
01:09If we don't qualify, I'm not shy to say it's a personal failure for me. We must qualify.
01:21The AFF Under 16 competition, which will begin on June 21, will be Jorda Libera's first trial after being appointed as the coach of the 16-year-old national team last May.
01:30The head of the GDT academy, however, did not set a winning target. Instead, he made the competition an initial experiment to form a strong team.
01:39He is set to face the AFC Under 17 competition in Laos next October with the final round, which will be held in Saudi Arabia, which offers nine slots to the Under 17 world cup.
01:52My target for this event is to make sure that we can compete against the strong teams we got in the group A.
02:01That is the team of the AFF, Australia and Thailand. Obviously, Australia looks difficult for our level, but we never know. We have to do our game and I'm sure we will compete against the three of them.
02:22For my team, we are not that close, but we know each other and we have a strong bond. So, we have to prepare for this team. We have to train hard and the coach has to push us.
02:37He has to push us to train hard and give us commitment to qualify for the AFF. We have to give our best for the AFF this year.
02:49Every player, even though we are only 16 years old, has a long journey ahead of us. The senior team also wants slots to go to the world cup.
03:01Of course, we want to go to the world cup. We know that it is a difficult journey, but it is not impossible for us to achieve it.
03:11If we continue to be committed to our performance and try our best, God willing, we can make it to the Under 17 world cup next year.
03:21The 16-year-old squad, which is made up of 23 players, will depart for Surakarta on Thursday with Malaysia in the opening schedule of the group C campaign against Team Moraleste on June 23.