Youth teams prepare

The Cambodia U-16 national team has been enjoying tournament football in Japan against other Mekong region countries and Japanese club junior sides, but finished up with a series of losses and no successes to show for their efforts, despite a couple of penalty shoot-outs. Three Phnom Penh Crown youngsters travelled with the squad: Sin Kakada, Yue Safy and Mao Piseth, in a squad of 17 that was made up of the FFC Academy team filling the remaining places. No comment. The team will be staying in Japan for a couple more weeks, playing more matches against Japan school teams before coming home, where the AFF U-16 Youth Championship will be held in Cambodia from 27 July until 9 August. Two more PPCFC players will join the squad, Svang Samnang and Chey Chetra. Matches will be played at Olympic and Army Stadiums with two groups involving 11 countries. Cambodia are in Group B with Australia, Myanmar, Philippines and Singapore. Group A contains Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Brunei and Laos. Cambodia's first match is against Philippines on 28 July at 6.30pm at the Olympic Stadium. In September the AFC U-16 Championships will be held, venue yet to be decided, and Cambodia will be in the same group as DPR Korea, Thailand and Singapore.

Meanwhile the Cambodia U-19s have been playing some local friendly games ahead of their call to action for the AFF U-19 Championships, to be held in Laos, from 22 August to 4 September. Cambodia are in Group A with Thailand, Australia, Brunei, Philippines and Laos. The FFC have appointed Hok Sochivorn as the head coach and he has called up a squad of 30 players for training, with the bulk coming from Svay Rieng. No players from Phnom Penh Crown have been called up for duty, even though the Crown Academy are acknowledged as the best the country has to offer and recently thrashed the Svay Rieng U-19 team 8-0 in a friendly match. Crown aren't sitting around twiddling their thumbs though, as they are preparing for this year's Asia Champions Trophy, which is expected to kick-off in early August and fixtures are likely to be announced in the ext week or so. japan and Korea are thought likely to be joining this season's competition.