KATHMANDU, Aug 16: The All Nepal Football Association (ANFA) on Sunday announced a 23-member final squad for the First SAFF U-19 Championship slated for August 20-29 in the capital.
The final squad was announced from a closed camp training of 32 players. The squad announced on Sunday comprise of three goalkeepers, eight defenders, seven midfielders and five forwards. Striker Bimal Gharti Magar is named the skipper of the team.Sojit Gurung, Roman Rasaili and Devraj Limbu are goalkeepers. Similarly, Ananta Tamang, Amit Tamang, Tchiring Gurung, Akasha Thapa, Dinesh Rajbanshi, Sudan Thapa, Gaurav Budhathoki and Kamal Shrestha are the defenders of the squad.
Hemanta Thapa Magar, Dona Thapa, Tej Tamang, Kiran Sunar, Bishwash Shrestha, Shussan Lama and Sunil Bal are the midfielders of the youth team. Likewise, Bimal Gharti Magar, Anjan Bista, Sujit Gurung, Shiva Subedi and Janom Man Ligal are forwards.
Among them Anjan, Bishwash, Ananta, Hemanta and Bimal Gharti Magar are also included in the 30-member squad announced for national team that is scheduled to play friendly match against India on August 31 in Pune, India.
Bal Gopal Maharjan is the head coach of the team while Sunil Shrestha is the coach and Mrigendra Mishra is goalkeeper coach. Similarly, Diwakar Ghale is the team manager. All three of them were the coach of Nepal's U-16 team that played the AFC U-16 finals last year in Thailand. The current U-19 squad consists of majority players of the U-16 squad.
The championship will be feature six member association of the SAFF excluding Pakistan and Sri Lanka. In the draw held on August 10 at Satdobato, Lalitpur, host Nepal, Bangladesh and Bhutan were placed in group A while Maldives, India and Afghanistan were draw in group B.
Nepal will play first match of the group against Bhutan on August 20 and play Bangladesh on August 24.
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