The Gibraltar U19 National Team make their first official competitive appearance since 2019 when they travel to Croatia for the U19 European Championship Qualifiers.
Drawn into Group 11, Gibraltar will face hosts Croatia on November 10 before facing Scotland and Armenia on November 13 and November 16 respectively.
The 20-man Gibraltar U19 squad is:
Leon AVELLANO, Ryan AZOPARDI, Julian BRITTO, Evan BUSTO, Finlay CAWTHORN, Thomas CHAKRAVERTY, Bilal DOUAH, Mohammed Abderafie EMRANI, Francis HUART, Julian LAGUEA, Kye LIVINGSTONE, Davan MARTIN, Kyron MCGRAIL, Sean PERERA, Kyle RODRIGUEZ, Lee SOIZA, Stefan THORNE, Harry VICTOR, Lewis VICTOR and Ellis WILSON.
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U19 Head Coach, Malcolm Martin, said:
"Despite Covid, preparations have gone really good. Obviously we’ve had to deal with Covid so we have been on and off the pitch, however, during the lockdown we were working on Zoom calls so we've definitely been working really hard."
"Fortunately it hasn’t been that long since we’ve played last because we’ve been playing against the Gibraltar National League teams. We have been lucky that they gave our players the chance to play against them."
"We’ve played the likes of Lincoln Red Imps FC, St. Joseph’s FC, Lions Gibraltar FC and Mons Calpe SC, among others. We’ve been playing against their first teams and we’ve competed really well against them which has been good for preparation."
"We're going into these fixtures and we know the opponents are top teams with top players so all we expect from them is quality. We don’t expect anything other than top quality players and teams that have worked really hard to get to the level they are at."
"With this being said, what we want to see is the players putting the things we’ve been coaching them into play. If we saw them do the things that we’ve coached them to do then we will be very happy. That for us would be a step forward. We’ve introduced a few new ways of playing and if we can show this on the pitch then we will be happy."
