Daryl's Notebook: Scouting the U20 Asian Cup (Final)
Will the U20 Asian Cup title go to the West of Asia, or will it leave the continent and head down to Oceania?
Well, it has been a whirlwind of a month following the U20 Asian Cup and scouting the future generation of Asia. From the group stage and 16 teams, all come together at Shenzhen, China, we now end up with only two teams who will be competing for the title.
Saudi Arabia has taken a slightly grueling route to get to the final. Even though they finished top of group B, the Western Asian team had to wait until the final group stage matchday to confirm their spot in the quarter-final with a 1-0 win over second-placed Jordan. The quarter-final and semi-final did not bring Saudi Arabia an easy time either, as they needed a 94th minute goal to knock the host China out of the tournament and coming out on top over South Korea on penalties to get to the final.
Meanwhile, Australia cruised past the group stage with a spotless record, which included wins over the host China and a decent team in Qatar, to finish top of group A. Their achievement handed them a tie against Iraq, and while the Middle East side did not make it easy for the Young Socceroos, they still advanced thanks to a 3-2 win and booked their spot at the U20 World Cup. Japan awaited them in the semi-final, but the quality of the A-League Men players shone to help the team overcame one of the favourites for the tournament and landed them back to Baoan Stadium for the final, where Australia have been playing most of their matches throughout this tournament.
So, without waiting any further, let’s get into the final!
First half
As expected from both teams’ performance throughout the tournament, Australia continued to be the dominant team in possession while Saudi Arabia were happy to sit back in their 4-4-2 mid-to-low block. The thing that made Saudi Arabia stood out this tournament was the toughness to break their defensive block down, which South Korea and China had found that process to be extremely frustrating. The fact that the players adopted an aggressive mentality when getting stuck into challenges did not help their opposition’s cause either.
That is not to say Saudi Arabia were hesitated to press inside of Australia’s half, in fact they did that quite often when the Young Socceroos tried to play out from a goal-kick. The 4-4-2 pressing shape helped with that since Saudi’s striker duo looked to press Australia’s centre-backs while also blocked the passing lanes heading to the double pivot. This forced the keeper (#1) Steven Hall or the centre-back duo (#3) Sebastian Esposito and (#4) Panagiotis Kikianis to play long passes forward, which allowed the Saudi defenders to either win the ball in the air or win second balls.
On the flip side, the Middle East side proved to be quite lethal with their counter-attacks. When their opposition could not regroup in time from a set piece situation, their wingers and strikers were able to expose their opposition’s high defensive line and carried the ball into the final third thanks to through balls in behind and each player’s pace. Australia might show this problem as the match went on, especially when centre-back Esposito had already been exposed of a similar situation against Iraq.
For Australia, they seemed to be enjoying better results in creating chances and breaking Saudi Arabia’s defensive block down in the first 15 minutes or so. This could be because of the Australian attackers’ natural flair and creativity coming from players like (#10) Alex Badolato, (#9) Luka Jovanović, or (#7) Daniel Bennie, which created a bit of chaos inside of the final third instead of structured, repeated attacks like what South Korea and China demonstrated. Chaos within a structure, is how I like to say.
Once again, the Young Socceroos proved to be super effective from set piece situations with (#20) Louis Agosti’s opening goal was scored from another free kick situation, where the initial cross into the box was cleared and found an unmarked Agosti on the edge of the box, and a long shot was made into the bottom left corner and way out of reach of (#22) Hamed Al Shanqiti. I do not have a specific number…yet, but I’m guessing this might be their third or fourth goal that Australia had scored from a set piece situation this tournament.
Australia had been doing well to engage with Saudi Arabia’s wide attacks after 30 minutes so far. Again, their 4-4-2 shape allowed for two players to come out and engage with Saudi’s nearest full-back and winger. Meanwhile, there were enough players inside of the box, which usually included the centre-back duo along with the opposite side full-back and maybe a couple of midfielders, to defend crosses coming in and clear the ball before it could get to the head of the Saudi attackers.
Rough situation for Australia, but I should also give credits to Saudi Arabia for crafting a decent attack to equalise inside of the stoppage time of the first half. From a relatively average cross on the right-hand side, two Saudi attackers managed to position themselves in between the Australian defenders to receive the cross, which (#9) Talal Haji eventually did. With a powerful header towards goal, Haji forced keeper Steven Hall to go into his own net to push the shot away, which Hall did not manage to clear the ball before it crossed the line. 1-1 heading into half time.
Second half
The two goals scored in the first half definitely opened the game up massively, with both teams went end to end to attack the other. So far, however, the chances that were created did not result in too many noticeable chances that could lead to the second goal for either team.
I will refrain to talk about this until after the match and when I can gather some more clips. But Australia managed to create a lot more chances in this match was because of their ability to play through Saudi Arabia’s 4-4-2 block. Again, I will do a more detailed analysis at the bottom of this article about this, so keep an eye out for that!
The match had slowed down a bit once the 60th minute mark was reached, but the way the match was going remained pretty much the same. Australia still dominated the ball and created most of the chances, which forced Saudi Arabia into a defensive mentality for most of the time. Meanwhile, whenever Saudi had the chance, they would attempt to break forward quickly and utilised the fact that the Australian players were not able to regroup soon enough and exposed that high defensive line.
Felt as if the Australian players were getting a bit more nervous and rushed to find a goal to take the lead, particularly because there were more long shots made by the Young Socceroos after the 60th minute mark. That went completely against what they were doing for the whole first half, which was patiently break Saudi Arabia down and found spaces where they could place players into good goal-scoring positions. It was also the thing that Saudi Arabia wanted to happen because they were ready and capable of blocking long shots.
Uh oh…(#6) Paul Okon-Engstler was subbed off right before the 90th minute for (#17) Frans Deli. Okon-Engstler had been one of the best players in the final so far, and that was not just about his ability to dictate the play from deep. His movement to position himself in the right space was so crucial for Australia’s build-up, he acted as the link between the defenders and the attackers, and his passes proved to be absolutely important for Australia to progress the play. Deli might be able to take on that responsibility, but a bit worrying whether Deli could take on the defensive work that Okon-Engstler did or not.
Extra time & penalties
Australia clearly looked a lot slower with their build-up sequences and even their progressive attempts. Fatigue definitely played a huge role here, with a lot of these players ran a lot in the 90+ minutes of regulation time and that would have taken a toll on their fitness. They have used all of their subs inside regulation time as well, which meant these players would have to see through the entire 30 minutes of extra time.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia kept most of their subs for this extra time period and they could use them to give the team an advantage in physicality. The other thing was Saudi Arabia had been known to be a very physical team over the tournament and their players were able to run and sustain a high level of performance for a long period of time. That also played into their defensive tactics as well, where the players did not run a lot and they could preserve their fitness for the extra time.
With the way the game was going, I would imagine either Saudi Arabia were holding out for one attack where they could spring forward and score, or they were holding out for the penalty shootout. Looking at the way that Saudi took their penalty shootout against South Korea, that would be something that the Middle East side favour because it would give them a level playing field.
Lots of long passes were played by Saudi Arabia in the second half of extra time, aiming towards the newly-substituted (#23) Thamer Al Khaibri. However, as many long passes made, most of them did not find Thamer at all, with either the Australian keeper claimed it or the defenders were able to bring the long ball down.
A cool and calmed penalty shootout from both teams. The first 9 penalties were placed with intention and both keepers could not get close, except for (#8) Jonny Yull’s penalty where Hamed Al Shanqiti got one hand to the ball but pushed it to the top of the net. That was the case until Steven Hall saved (#13) Bassam Hazazi’s last penalty to take the trophy home to Australia.
Post-match talks
I did not plan for this section to be included in this article since it is still a Notebook, where things are intentionally kept simple! But having watched the match and the entire tournament, I have some thoughts about how the final played out and it is probably best to include them in here, instead of writing a separate article for that. And yes, this section (and the clip below) are the reasons why I delayed publishing the entire article up to now.
This clip is quite long, so I will save you the time if you don’t like to go through a 9-minute video. Long story short, I compared Australia’s approach with China and South Korea’s approach in the quarter-final and semi-final and was able to notice a slight difference that might have helped Australia came out on top.
With China and South Korea, I thought their approach was quite static and repetitive with a heavy reliance, with both teams relied quite heavily on the use of their wingers to create chances. This was quickly shut down by Saudi Arabia as they constantly created 2v1 situations against their opposition's wingers to limit the threat while the players were also aggressive in recovering the ball. Furthermore, the players also did not utilise the spaces in between Saudi Arabia's defensive lines much, which led to a lot of ball circulation between the defenders and midfielders, and not much progression.
Australia, on the other hand, took a similar, but also different approach. There was still a reliance on wing attacks, but the players were also more active and looked to utilise spaces that their teammates created using off-ball runs. The players also took more risks with their passes and played in between the lines more, which disrupted Saudi Arabia's 4-4-2 defensive block and led to Australia progressing the ball into the final third a lot more.
Okay, post-match talks over!
After 3 weeks that felt like the entire February, the U20 Asian Cup has wrapped up with Australia bringing the trophy out of Asia and to Oceania. I am not bias, but it was no less than what they deserved for a great generation and for the style of football that the team played. But overall, this has been a very interesting tournament where a lot of promising players step up to the spotlight.
I will do a debrief/scout edition for the tournament later on, but I hope you have enjoyed my coverage of the tournament. With that, the Notebook will return to its normality where I cover random matches from random leagues. Until the next tournament begins!