Tardy confirms France friendly

RWANDA’s U-17 football team- the Junior Wasps have secured a high profile friendly match with their French counterparts- the Little Blues. The game will be played on April 28 in Clairefontaine, Paris. Junior Wasps head coach Richard Tardy reckons that the friendly will be a good test for the youngsters after an intensive two-week training camp. “The team is preparing to fly to France for a training camp so the match against ‘Les Bleuets’ will be a good test for the boys ahead of the real thing ‘Fifa U-17 World Cup’,” the 61-year-old said. For the Little Blues, the match is a build-up to the Euro U-17 championship slated to run from May 3-15 in Serbia. While in France, the team will also play against reserves sides for PSG, Auxerre and Lyon. After the training camp in France, the team will head to the US for another training camp before connecting to Mexico for the tournament proper. Rwanda, Burkina Faso, Congo Brazzaville and Ivory Coast are Africa’s representatives in the global showpiece which kicks off on June 18. Other qualified nations include the USA, Canada, Panama and Jamaica from the CONCACAF region (Central, North America and Caribbean) and North Korea, Uzbekistan, Australia and Japan from Asia. New Zealand also qualified from the Oceania region. South America’s representatives will be revealed after the upcoming 14th continental U-17 championships in Ecuador. Group A has Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru and Uruguay while Group B pits Brazil against Chile, Colombia, Paraguay and Venezuela. The top three teams in each pool will advance to a final six-team round-robin group. As well as collecting a ticket to Mexico, the top four teams will also qualify for this year’s Pan American Games. Ends

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Tardy confirms France friendly