History Will Be Made Tomorrow When Two Teams Qualify For U-17 Women's World Cup

Tomorrow, 18 September 2024, is a significant day in Oceania football when, for the first time in history, two teams will qualify for the FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup 2025, to be played in Morocco.

The qualifiers will be the winners of the OFC U-16 Women’s Championship semi-finals - first Samoa vs New Caledonia, second New Zealand vs Tonga. Both games will be played at HFC Bank Stadium in Suva, and can be watched live and free on FIFA+.

Game details and quotes from the head coaches are below.

Semi Final 1: Samoa v New Caledonia, 12:00pm (Fiji time) | WATCH LIVE

Semi Final 2: New Zealand v Tonga, 3:00pm (Fiji time) | WATCH LIVE

Kenjy Vendegou, New Caledonia head coach

Before playing this semi-final, the team feels good, the team is very happy to have been able to get this far, to have qualified for this semi-final and the state of mind is good.

What are we going to focus on to prepare the team for the semi-final? First of all, we are going to work on the notions of combativeness, effort and to fight for our country, to give everything and then to work on certain tactical points that we can improve compared to what we had in the first matches.

Qualifying for a World Cup means a lot of things.

First of all, a lot of pride. It would be the first time that a female New Caledonian team qualifies for a World Cup. It would be a huge reward for all the work that has been done by the New Caledonian Federation, and by the technical department. It would be a reward for all the work that has been done and it would also reward the girls, of course.

Juan Chang, Samoa head coach

The team is focusing one day at a time. Today it's just about training and recovering because we know that tomorrow will come, but for us it's only about focusing on the day to day. So we're not really thinking about it [the semi-final] too much. We're just thinking about what we can do today in order to get better for tomorrow.

We know that tomorrow will come on its own, so we are just thinking about today and focusing on today: how can we be better today in order to win the day today.

Tomorrow we'll worry or focus on what tomorrow brings. But we'll not do that until tomorrow. So we're not really focusing on anything other than living in the present. The energy that we have with us for today, the focus that we have with us for today and, uh, the togetherness that we've gathered, we only focus that on today,and we’re only thinking about one step at a time and just one day at a time.

Alana Gunn, New Zealand head coach

The team's feeling really excited looking at the semi-final. We have had two really good days of rest, which has actually been quite a challenge for some of them to stay off their feet and recover from the pool play. So they are itching to go, and really, really excited to have the opportunity to play Tonga and to represent the fern again.

Our focus on the semi-final over the past two days has really been a reflection of how far we've progressed so far in this tournament and how far we can continue to grow and develop as a team on and off the field.

Off the field, we've been really focusing on nutrition, hydration, and rest. And some of the principles we've been looking at on the field is just how we continue to develop our playing style, how that looks like when we are trying to play forward and move into really good areas of the pitch. And then the girls all have their own individual goals that they want to achieve on game day.

Qualifying for the World Cup with this group would be immense. It's not something we take for granted, even though the history of this tournament potentially would suggest we could. We definitely are heading into the semi-final to try to qualify for the World Cup and give this group of players the opportunity to be able to further develop next year leading into a World Cup. The opportunity to travel and represent the country on the world stage is something that they're all gunning for.

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