Tajikistan shocks United States at U-17 World Cup

Tiny Tajikistan scored four goals, coming from behind on two occasions, to beat the United States, 4-3, in the Under-17 World Cup in South Korea.

A stunning game-winning goal from Fatkhulio Fatkhuloev capped a back-and-forth affair that saw the Americans take 1-0 and 3-2 leads, only to have Tajikistan come back with some stellar strikes.

New Jersey native Billy Schuler set up the first US goal and scored the second to star for the Americans, who will face Tunisia on Thursday.

Comments

[Brad of SoccerFansintheUSA]

Ugh.

[Chrisnj]

USA! USA! USA! Oh, sorry they lost!

[ag nigrin]

Watched the match live on TV...yes I got up early for this disaster...and the USU17s looked tentative...no fighting spirit for most of the game and to be honest Tajikistan deserved to win as
they hung in there and finished out the game with some lovely goals...

[Speedball]

Oh fudge!

[Justin O]

I spent most of 2005 and 2006 in Tajikistan. This Tajikistan team is basically a club team, the all come from the same club anyway. They pretty much all come from the capital, Dushanbe.

[Julio]

Man, I can just see BORAT dancing in the street today...

[Dannyc58]

US Soccer chocking in an international (See: Non-Concacaf) tourament? SHOCKING!

[Istvan from Budapest]

Tajikistan ranked #174 by FIFA

[Brad of SoccerFansintheUSA]

I believe there was an article on ESPN talking about how great our U-17 team is and how we have a legitimate chance of getting further than the U-20s.

Yeah, and Tajikistan is a hottie paradise.

[Frank]

Does anyone know if these game s are being shown again on tape delay today?

[East River]

This team has a habit of loosing games in the last 20 or 10 mintues. Just thinking of some of their tournaments and friendlies in the past year. They would play well but some time after the 70th minute would take their foot off the pedal and just give up goals.

[DCM]

The next game vs Tunisia is being shown on ESPN2. It is Thursday at 4:00am ET. Other than this one game everything else is either on the U or 360.

Here is the schedule:
http://soccernet.espn.go.com/fixtures?league=fifa.world.u17&cc=5901

[Northzax]

That's it. No more foreign aid to Tajikistan. Time we got serious about this.

interesting question: do people in Tajikistan see this as a major upset, like if they beat Holland, say? Or a minor upset of a larger country?

[Peter Bering]

It would be about like beating Belgium in their perceptions of achievements. And that is not bad for a new footballing country.

[Alex]

so much for this group of players being the most talented US u-17 squad ever. lol its pretty much over now.they need to win and at least tie the next game to have any chance of advancing.

[Peter Bering]

Who is to say that they are not "the most talented US squad ever"? There are many decent teams there, and the US is not a favourite now nor on previous occasions. But here is still a good possibility of advancing by winning two games.

[MK]

By the 60th minute, the US was pulling their offense off the field in favor of defense and trying to kill off the game. Our boys wasted time before every throw-in and goalkick for a good 20 minutes before the equalizer and the eventual gwg, so Hackworth's standing in the technical area and pointing to his watch in extra time looked pretty pitiful.

I think this team needed a loss like that to show them that they don't automatically inherit the success of the u20s because they are wearing the same kit. I hope we see a full 90 minute performance on Thursday!

What is a "throat injury"?

[Braden]

Perhaps we've become an American version of Italy. Choking (rather than chocking) in our first game and then coming out with something to prove for the rest of the tournament. These youth games are always somewhat unpredictable, so I wouldn't write off the team just yet.

[Eric]

yeah MK, ya can't say that any team who start time wasting in the 80th deserves to win.

i say worry about your game until the 80 - 85th, then start being b!tches about stalling

[tex]

Why does Bradenton exist? We seem to be regressing, the 1999 was still best team of U-17's and they were the first residency....who's going to get fired in USSF? Obviously there is no accountability for poor performances, who do we blame? The management of the program, get rid of all of them.

[Justin O]

Northzax,

I was in Tajikistan when they qualified, and none of my Tajikistani friends knew anything about it. Even the soccer fans knew nothing, though they could all comment in depth on the Russian and English leagues' news at the time. I'm very interested in knowing how this is often being received there.

That FIFA ranking seems off, too. Tajikistan has improved significantly since their civil war ended in 1997. They're just about at the point where they could contend for the "octoganal" in Asian WC qualifying. Of course, that in part is a commentary on how poor Asian soccer is.

[Peter Bering]

FIFA rankings are not directly relevant for U-17 and are even generally a bit dubious.

Asian football is about like CONCACAF as to their respective top levels, except there are more teams competing at that level in Asia.

There should only be four FIFA regions: Africa, America, Asia and Europe.

[Peter Bering]

FIFA rankings are pretty much irrelevant, as the only criterion for being a champion is to succeed when it counted, namely at the last WC and in the last regional championship. Italy is number one at least until Euro 2008.

[Donovan]

If you watch the videos on the US Soccer site, you can sort of understand the problems they had. No one had any footage of the team playing. They were trying to scout them and they had essentially nothing. When they looked at the games they had played, they didn't know anything about the teams they were playing either. So they pretty much went in blind with no game plan. I would have still expected the US to win, but I wasn't all that surprised to see this. I think it's also hard for 17 year olds to not buy into their own hype a little bit when they are playing a country none of them had ever heard of before this. Oh, Borat is Kazakhstan, not Tijikistan.

[Justin O]

Borat is England, actually.