Myanmar will host the Asian Football Confederation’s U-19 Championship from October 9 -23, with Yangon’s Thuwunna Youth Training Centre Stadium playing host to the semi-final, final and all of Myanmar’s games, with Nay Pyi Taw’s Wunna Theikdi stadium also holding games in the group stages and quarter-finals.
It is a tournament they have not played in the finals of since 1976 when they competed as Burma and Myanmar’s German coach Gerd Zeise called on home fans to fill the stadium to make the most of the country hosting this year’s championship.
“I hope the stadium is full, in Vietnam [for the AFF U-19 Championship last month] we played against 40,000 fans from Hanoi, if we have 30,000 here, of course it will be an advantage,” said Zeise at a press conference held on October 8.
In what fans call ‘Myanmar’s Golden Age’ the country won the tournament, then called the AFC Youth Championship, seven times between 1961 and 1970. Only South Korea has won it more.
The country’s commercial capital will play host to all of the home nation’s games if they are to lift the trophy in a tournament that also offers four qualification berths for next years FIFA U-20 World Cup, to be held in New Zealand.
“We can promise the Myanmar spectators they will see good football,” said the coach.
Speaking before this May’s AFC Challenge Cup, where Myanmar attempted to qualify for the senior-level AFC Championship,
U Ba Pu, a left-winger and ‘legend’ of the golden age, when Burma won two Asian Games football tournaments and was runner-up at the 1968 AFC Asian Cup told Mizzima that it was the U-19 Championship that mattered most in rebuilding Myanmar’s sporting prowess.
“Myanmar lost its track for a long time, it will take time to rebuild and we should focus on the youth,” said U Ba Pu.
