After spending 10 days in Denver to acclimatise to playing football at altitude, where they played training matches against England and the Korea Republic, the Young Socceroos arrived in Colombia earlier this week to finalise their preparations.

On the eve of his team’s opening match, Versleijen said he was really looking forward to facing Ecuador.

“The game against Ecuador, like every first game in a tournament, will be a very important game because the result of this first game will decide what you have to do for your second and third game,” said Versleijen at the official pre-match media conference.

“Of course we have studied the team of Ecuador and I think they have a very good team; very strong players up front, especially their wing players have good quality.

“We studied all their qualification games and we have a good idea about the strength of Ecuador.

“They also have a very strong defence line. They only conceded four goals in their qualifiers to come to the World Cup. I think we have a good game plan for tomorrow’s game.

“We respect Ecuador for the way they play. We respect also their attacking ability and I believe that our team has enough confidence to get a good result against Ecuador."

When asked about his starting eleven, Versleijen was clear in his mind on his team but has keeping his cards close to his chest until match day.

“We already defined our starting eleven. When we started the training camp in Denver, at that time already, the starting eleven were already decided for about ninety percent.

“Maybe one or two positions still had to work out who was going to play, but in general our team is set to play and ready to go.

Young Socceroos captain Ben Kantarovski was also confident about his team’s chances

“We have prepared well in Colorado, USA for the first game of the World Cup,” he said.

“We have been training at altitude for two weeks to acclimatise to the big change from sea-level and coming to Manizales a couple of days ago we’ve really knuckled down to prepare for that first game against Ecuador and concentrate on our game plan."

Due to the wet weather that Manizales has experienced over the past couple of days, the Young Socceroos were unable to have a training session at the Palogrande stadium, but did have a walk on the playing field in the early evening to get a feel of the match venue.

The Young Socceroos matches and the Semi-Finals and Final of the FIFA U-20 World Cup Colombia 2011 will be broadcast live on SBS TV.