England! Scotland! Excitement!

Feeling a bit bored today? Fancy a matchup between England and Scotland? If both of your answers are yes, then Hallelujah! do I have something for you. In the first meeting between the neighbors at any (male) level in 10 years, the two will play today at 2 EDT in a U-19 Euro qualifier. To add a little spice, the winner of the match goes on to the full tournament. It's too bad the British press doesn't care.

Looking for any information on this match, I went to all of the usual haunts. Nary a word anywhere. Heck, even the sites I use for keeping up with scores--the sites that claim to give you all of a day's fixtures and scores--did not have anything on the competition at all. A Google News search for England Scotland Euro brings only two hits from the last twenty-four hours. The original article I found, and the FA website.

I have no link for it, but I do remember reading a FourFourTwo article a couple of years back which highlighted England's problems with youth tournaments. Namely--they ignored them because they weren't as good as the continental teams at that time. The article implied that this was partly to blame for the current state of the England squad (missing out on Euro 2008 and all that). Is the lack of coverage, then, an intentional head in the sand effort by the press? Probably not, I know, but I would still think it merited at least some ink.

Anyway, the game breaks down like this: if England win or draw, then they advance. Otherwise the Scots will head to Ukraine in July for the finals with a win. Both team have beaten their other two group opponents, Slovakia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, already. England enjoy a one goal better differential.

The game is at Sheffield United's Bramall Lane tonight. The FA website says that Setanta will be showing the match, so keep an eye out for a feed. Otherwise, the UEFA page for updates on the match is here.

Here's hoping for a Scottish win. I'm going to go put on one of my hideous Scotland shirts now.

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UEFA U19 Championships

Thanks to commenter Mike Georger for pointing out UEFA.com's excellent coverage of the UEFA U19 Championships, which are currently ongoing. Liverpool reserve player Krisztián Németh has cut the ribbon on scoring in Hungary's match against Bulgaria. I'd like to point out that the UEFA U19 Championship is where Fernando Torres made his first big mark winning player of the tournament.

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