South Melbourne FC will once again be on the World Stage with one of our youth teams competing in the highly regarded Shanghai Youth Tournament over the next 10 days.
The Club has been chosen by the organisers to represent Australia, with squad members from our Under 15, Under 16, Under 18 and Under 20 squads all forming part of the SMFC team that will participate in the tournament.
The tournament brings together teams from a range of countries from right around the globe, with Australia, Cameroon, China, Germany, Russia, Slovakia, Spain and Thailand all represented.
South have been placed into Group C, which places them against a local squad from Shanghai, as well as Russian and German representative sides.
Speaking to smfc.com.au at the airport prior to departing for Shanghai, coach Sasa Kolman was optimistic about the squad’s chances in China.
“It would be a great opportunity for us to see how we are going to go against some big football nations, with some fantastic youth teams from Germany, Russia and Spain all represented in this tournament.
My eyes will be on developing and identifying players from this squad and hope that I can bring them into our Under 20s squad if they aren’t already there as part of this tournament. However it is an experience of a lifetime for these kids”.
Listen to Sasa’ Full Interview Here
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The players that are part of the squad which will be representing South Melbourne FC and Australia are Nicky Edwards, Lachlan Beever, Kirk Kyriakopoulos, Gerry Kavadas, Campbell Dovaston, Matthew Zilavec, Panayotis Avramidis, Massimo Pesce, Vincent Zhong, Costa Mesourouni, Charly Layton, Christopher Kaev, Mathiang Week, Archie Sweeney, Nashir Hussainy, Timothy Tselepis and Wishy Laurie.
With our first match on Saturday night Melbourne time, we wish the boys and coach Sasa Kolman all the best for the week ahead.