Venezuela first

By HENRY MORABANG
VENEZUELA are the first team expected to arrive in Port Moresby today for next week’s Under-20 women’s soccer World Cup.
Sports Minister Justin Tkatchenko said the country was excited to host the first of 15 visiting teams, with the South Americans, who will compete in Group D, to set foot on these shores for the first time — only Japan and USA have experienced playing here, having competed in a tri-series with PNG earlier this year.
“It is something special for the country as Venezuela will arrive tomorrow (today) then followed by Korea Republic and Brazil who will be traveling in over the weekend. The rest of the 13 teams will arrive next week,” Tkatchenko said.
“We are game ready to host the young champions from all five continents of the world to converge on to play football,” he said.
Venezuela will play their first match against defending champions, Germany on Nov 14 at the National Football Stadium, and then against Korea on Nov 17 with their final pool match against Mexico on Nov 21.
Venezuela will be headed by star striker Gabriela Garcia, pictured left, while fiesty mid-fielder Lourdes Moreno, pictured right, and the recently-completed U17 Women’s World Cup leading goal-scorer Deyna Castellanos (with six goals) are the other Venezuela players to look out for.
La Vinotinto finished runners-up in Group A of the South American qualifiers behind Brazil, the only team to beat them in the whole tournament.
A subsequent run of three straight wins then came to an end in the first match of the final four-team round robin phase, when they let slip a two-goal lead to draw 2-2 with Argentina.
A goalless draw with Brazil then followed, after which the Venezuelans came from behind to beat Colombia 2-1 and take second place overall, clinching their ticket to port Moresby.
Meanwhile, the Fifa officials have already started arriving in Port Moresby to work alongside their counterparts at the Local Organising Committee to deliver the Fifa U20 Women’s World Cup.
The coming days will see Fifa officials from competitions, travel and transport, ICT, referees, guest and delegation management, security, media, medical and the appeals and disciplinary committee arrive.
Fifa logistics and team members from the host broadcast services (HBS) and transvision are in town and doing final inspections of the sites where the camera locations for each of the stadiums have been set and the broadcast compounds at the each of the match venues.
They are also setting up the international broadcast coordinating centre at (IBCC) for broadcast link during the matches.
HBS is the official broadcasters of the Fifa U20 Women’s World and will be broadcasting the matches to over 100 countries to an estimated viwership of more than 120 million people.