Bishkek:
The Indian U-17 Girls’ team will start their campaign on April 26 with hosts Kyrgyzstan in a Group F clash in the Qualifiers for AFC U17 Womens Asian Cup tentatively scheduled to be held in Indonesia from April 7-20, 2024.
India are in Group F with Myanmar as the other team in the preliminary group of the qualifiers. India will take on Myanmar in their second match in the group on April 28.
Group F will open at the historic 82-year-old Dolen Omurzakov Stadium in Bishkek with a match between hosts Kyrgyz Republic and Myanmar, the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) informed in a release on Thursday.
With just under a year to go for the AFC U17 Women’s Asian Cup, 24 teams across Asia will embark on their qualifying journey this Saturday (April 22).
Thailand, Mongolia, Vietnam, Singapore, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Guam and Jordan are some of the top teams in action in the qualifiers in which 29 teams were allocated to five groups of four teams and three groups of three teams, with teams seeded according to their performance in the 2019 AFC U-16 Women’s Championship final tournament and qualification.
To be played in a single round-robin league format at a centralised venue for each of the eight groups, Round 1 of the Qualifiers for the ninth AFC U17 Women’s Asian Cup will run until April 30 with the group winners progressing to Round 2, which are scheduled for September 16 to 24.
They will be divided into two groups and the top two teams from each will join the three highest-seeded sides from the AFC U-16 Women’s Championship 2019 – defending champions Japan, DPR Korea and China PR – and hosts Indonesia in the Finals.
Five teams – Bahrain, Bhutan, Indonesia, United Arab Emirates and Iraq – have withdrawn since the draw for the Qualifiers was made in November 2022, leaving the remaining teams to be divided into eight groups of three.