This weekend’s final of the Oceania U-17s football Cup in Fiji will provide an added bonus with both teams having already reached a significant goal.<\/p>\n
By winning their respective semi-finals, both New Caledonia and New Zealand have been guaranteed a spot at FIFA’s U-17 men’s World Cup in Peru later this year.<\/p>\n
The first team to do so was New Caledonia which won a dramatic match against Tahiti in a penalty shoot-out in Suva.<\/p>\n
The two sides were locked 1-1 at full-time with both goals coming in the first half; Nathan Albacete netting on 14 minutes for New Caledonia and Titouan Guillemant grabbing an equaliser on 30 minutes.<\/p>\n
New Caledonia could have been heading out when a dramatic series of moments occurred on the hour mark.<\/p>\n
Star player Jean-Yves Saiko was upended in the box, and referee Calvin Berg pointed to the spot.<\/p>\n
Argan Clodic-Boucher saved Joseph Hnaissilin’s spot kick but Berg ordered the kick be retaken due to players encroaching.<\/p>\n
Hnaissilin again went low and the keeper saved it for a second time.<\/p>\n
New Caledonia won the penalty shoot-out 3-2.<\/p>\n
In the later kick-off, New Zealand broke hosts Fiji’s hearts with a 4-1 victory.<\/p>\n
Adam Watson scored three times and provided the assist for the other New Zealand goal.<\/p>\n
The final now takes place on Saturday evening local time, while Tahiti play Fiji in the third-place play-off on the same day.<\/p>\n
Source – RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This weekend’s final of the Oceania U-17s football Cup in Fiji will provide an added bonus with both teams having already reached a significant goal. By winning their respective semi-finals, both New Caledonia and New Zealand have been guaranteed a spot at FIFA’s U-17 men’s World Cup in Peru later this year. The first team […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2586,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiji-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2585"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2585\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2587,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2585\/revisions\/2587"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}