Leeds United striker Mateo Joseph will be doing all he can to make the most of his first England Under-20s World Cup audition this evening. The Spanish-born striker is eligible to represent the Three Lions through his father and after bagging 16 goals in all competitions for Leeds’ youth side this season, he received his first call-up last week.
As such, Joseph has been training with Ian Foster’s squad over the last few days and he could be set to make a debut tonight as England U20s take on Germany at the Manchester City Academy Stadium. The United striker has plenty of competition for a spot in the side, with Man City’s Liam Delap, Tottenham’s Alfie Devine and Daniel Jebbison of Sheffield United also included.
However, Joseph will be striving to put his best foot forward before travelling to Marbella with England for the remainder of the international break, with matches to be played against USA and France. This month will be the last time Foster sees his players before selecting his 21-man squad for the 2023 FIFA U20 World Cup in Indonesia, which gets underway in May.
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Joseph, then, has the chance to prove his worth and potentially seal his spot on the plane by catching the head coach’s eye over the next week or so. England won the U20 World Cup back in 2017 with a side packed full of current Premier League stars such as Dean Henderson, Dominic Calvert-Lewin and Dominic Solanke to name just a few.
A host of the current crop of U20s have also seen success, lifting the UEFA U19s European Championship last summer and they’ll travel to South East Asia as one of the favourites to win the tournament.
"In order to get to an Under-20 World Cup you must finish in the top five teams in Europe at Under-19 level and that's very, very difficult,” Foster said in an interview with Manchester Evening News this week. “In order to qualify for the 19s Euros there's only seven teams qualify out of 53, so when this group of players won it last year we knocked Portugal out of the elite round but we went to a tournament that didn't have obviously Portugal, Spain, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, big nations didn't qualify.
"This is a tournament that historically is a massive tournament, a massive stepping stone for players into senior squads. Historically when you look back and you read some of the stories, you look back at the Argentina-winning group of Messi, Aguero and Zabaleta and they speak so fondly of their experiences at this tournament.
"I know our group of players from 2017 look back so fondly on it. We've just come off the back of winning a major tournament at junior level and the big challenge for us now is winning after winning so we can do something that's unprecedented in a European nation winning a European Championship and then going on to win a World Cup at Under-20 level. That's our aim. We believe we can do it. We know how difficult it will be. But we go into these three games in March preparing against really tough and challenging opposition to make sure we're ready to go into a wonderful tournament."
Joseph would give himself a great chance of being selected to represent England in Indonesia should he make a good first impression over the next few days. He’s not the only Leeds player in action for the Three Lions during this international break, though.
Sonny Perkins and Darko Gyabi are with the U19s and they’ll hope to be in action tonight, too, with Simon Rusk’s side playing Hungary at Walsall. Further games are scheduled for Saturday afternoon against Iceland at Rotherham and Tuesday March 28 when Turkey head to Chesterfield.
James Debayo is with the U18s, while Archie Gray, fresh from signing professional terms at Elland Road, has been included in the U17s squad. That’s not to mention Charlie Cresswell, whose performances on loan at Millwall have earned him another call up to the U21s set-up.
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