Kathmandu, June 5: Nepal will host Group E selection matches of 9th Asian Youth Under-16 Soccer Championship from 10th of this month in which four teams are slotted to participate.

National Under-16 teams from Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Maldives and hosts Nepal will vie for a place in the final round of the 9th Asian Championship. The teams are expected to arrive in Kathmandu from today.

The match officials of different nations have already been nominated as accordance with Asian Football Confederation policy to hold the tournament of international standard.

So far Nepalese the formation of Nepalese Under-16 team is concerned, the players for t have been selected after scrutinising their performance in the national league, Khukuri Cup, open cup championships held at different places and the practice matches at 12 different districts where All Nepal Football Association (ANFA) has launched its football development programmes, ANFA President Ganesh Thapa said at a press conference today.

” The idea behind hosting the present U-16 matches is to show that Nepal can too host a championship of international standard and like other nations, our team should also have the opportunity to get advantage of home turf and crowd,” Thapa said. ANFA however has organised such events in the past too and hopes to receive the assistance as it has been getting from the all concerned quarters, ANFA press release said.

Thapa said that all these Nepalese players were kept under four months of close training. Our team, though has not had the experience of playing with international teams, but has been playing preparatory matches with Nepalese police and army teams and with football clubs from Kathmandu, Thapa added.

He further said that in its endeavour to develop football in the country ANFA will launch new programmes by running at least one football programme in Kathmandu’s ten schools every Saturday during this year.

In today’s press conference held at ANFA office at Satdobato, Lalitpur, ANFA secretary Lok Bahadur Shahi welcomed the participants while vice president Mahesh Bista gave vote of thanks.