U-16 USA National Team arrived in Japan on Saturday 10 June and held their first training on Monday 12 ahead of the commencement of the U-16 International Dream Cup 2017 JAPAN presented by The Asahi Shimbun on Wednesday 14 June at Yurtec Stadium Sendai. Other competition participants U-16 Guinea and U-16 Netherlands landed at Narita Airport on Monday 12.

After a long flight, most players appeared to be tired, but each team had training at a practice field in Miyagi Prefecture to get themselves ready for their opening match scheduled on Wednesday 14.

U-16 Japan and three other participating teams will all aim for the Dream Cup Trophy in a single round-robin competition and will face each other on Wednesday 14, Friday 16 and Sunday 18.

USA National Team Comments

Leonardo Sepulveda
Since we don’t have many occasions in our football career to try out our skills against world-class teams in these kinds of international tournaments, I’m very excited to take part in it.

Taylor Booth
I’m very happy to participate in this tournament. We are well prepared, and I’m looking forward to the competition as well.

Guniea National Team Comments

Mohamed Maléah CAMARA, Coach
Just as I expected, Japan is an amazing and the most technologically advanced country I’ve ever visited. Japan is a wonderful country that I consider to be ahead of certainly Guinea as well as the United States and France.

Ahmed Tidiane KEITA
I saw many beautiful cities along the way from the airport to Tokyo and then moving to Sendai by Shinkansen. Tokyo is a major city as I expected. Food is delicious as well.

Tidiane DOUMBOUYA
Everything is going quite smoothly during our stay here. I’m very happy to have the opportunity to come to Japan.

Netherlands National Team Comments

Peter van der Veen, Coach
I feel Japan is a very sophisticated country, where check-ins at the hotels, reservations at the restaurants, starting time of the practice site and everywhere we go are on time. Furthermore, Japanese people are courteous, and I am very pleased to have the chance to stay in Japan. Talking about the tournament, we will play with creativity and strong mentality and enjoy the coming matches, while we aim to win the trophy as well. My players have a lot of opportunities to play against European countries but don’t have many chances to face teams from other continents like Africa, America and Asia. I believe it is very important to play against countries having different cultures and playing styles as well.

Wouter Burgerl (Captain)
I have an impression that Japan is a large country. We are looking to capitalise on our strength of aggressive defence to initiate effective attacks. In order for us to do that, we need to make swift transitions between offence and defence and be fully aware of this especially against Japan, where the match is expected to be tough.

Kenzo Goudmijn
Our ultimate goal is to win the tournament here in Japan. We will try to combine well with one another to showcase our brand of football to the Japanese fans.

2017-6-14(Wed.)・16(Fri.)・18(Sun.)
Yurtec Stadium Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture［All Matches Free of Admission］

Tournament Information