Fresh Faces For Young Socceroos

The Qantas Young Socceroos squad includes 17 Australian-based players and one overseas-based player, Aaron Lennox.

Gold Coast United midfielder Jake Barker-Daish was a member of the recent Qantas Young Socceroos squad that competed at the U20 World Cup earlier this month and Connor Chapman, Yianni Perkatis, Corey Brown, Anthony Proia, Jesse Makarounos & Luke Remington were members of the Joeys squad that were at the U17 World Cup Mexico 2011.

This will be the first outing for this group of players looking to qualify for the U20 World Cup Turkey 2013 and Versleijen knows playing matches against quality opposition is an extremely important part of that process.

“This is the start of our new campaign and our first official time together for the next group of Qantas Young Socceroos,” said Versleijen

“We are missing a number of players for a variety of reasons, for example resting Mustafa Amini and Terry Antonis after the World Cup, but unfortunately many others are injured at this time.

“The positive that we can take out of this is that we will get to have a look at a few new players that may not normally be selected at this time as well as some of the players that went to the Under 17 World Cup in Mexico.

“With our AFC U19 Championship qualifiers scheduled for later this year, this tournament is a good place to start our preparations.”

The Qantas Young Socceroos will face Shizuoka on Thursday afternoon at the Fujieda Sports Park Soccer Field, followed by Japan on Sunday evening at the Kusanagi Stadium and will play their final match of the SBS Cup against Mexico on Sunday evening at the Stadium Ecopa.

The AFC U19 Championship qualifiers will be held from October 31 to November 8 with the venue to be announced soon.

The Qantas Young Socceroos have been drawn in Group G of the competition along with China P.R., Indonesia, Singapore and Macau.

Qantas Young Socceroos Squad

SBS Cup, Shizuoka, Japan, 18-21 August, 2011