Why in ice-hockey 18, 20 and senior and in soccer 17,19,21 and senior?
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You have a point. Obviously i was confused with UEFA (Union of European Football Associations)
They have European Championship U-21 U-19 U-17
Only every second championship (the U21 is a qualifier for the Summer Olympics, the U19 for the FIFA U20), but the U17s are having both UEFA and FIFA, and every second year, the U21/U19/U17 are not any qualifiers, they are simply the final tournaments, like the senior Euro 2016 for example.
Soccer is different. They play qualification which takes 2 years, and then the final tournament. In hockey you have simply the final tournament and that's it. For example, the current U21 campaign started in 2015 and THAT is the year where all players had to be 21 or under. Which means, if I got that right, that the actual final U21 tournament can actually have players who are 23 years old. Kinda weird, but that's how it is apparently.
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The UEFA U19s are just held a year before the U20 world cup and thus have a different name. CONCACAF, CONMEBOL etc all have U20 championships. Africa has it a year before so it's the U19. But it's essentially the same group of players on all continents just with different names. The u21s used to be called the U23 challenge cup but they just made a semantic name change for when the tournament started vs where it ended. It's essentially a U23 tournament, but yes they whittle down all the European nations over several years. CONCACAF has regional U23 tournaments to get Central American and Caribbean qualifiers for their U23 tournament which they only hold because of the Olympics.
South America doesn't even bother with a U23 tournament. Their U20 tournament is a qualifier for both the Olympics and U20 World Cup. The UEFA u21 tournament is really the only one of that age group that wasn't invented just to have Olympic Qualification. I don't think North America, Asia or Africa had u23 tournaments before the last twenty years.
FIFA started the U17s originally as a U16 and upped the age. The whole concept of U17 international tournaments is only really invented in the 1980s. The IIHF invented the U18s in 1999 so it's all a relatively new thing. Why they picked those ages? Seems arbitrary. The Concept of a U20 age group seems to have been picked up by both FIFA and the IIHF at the same time in the 1970s. The UEFA U19s were originally a FIFA tournament, until FIFA decided to drop the idea. Probably because it didn't make money to fly teams around the world in the 1950s. UEFA picked it up and eventually FIFA retook the U20 idea in the 70s. Again guessing that it's down to advances in air travel.
Obviously soccer has a lot more competitive countries than hockey so the structure is different. I think a world hockey tournament over several years might be cool, but wouldn't be competitive.
Before 1999 it was IIHF u18 European championships.
In soccer and in Europe and propably everywhere but North America people don't care much about junior/high school/college sports.
In soccer and in Europe and propably everywhere but North America people don't care much about junior/high school/college sports.
Uhhhhhh. College sports in the US is probably bigger the most football leagues around the world.
This is just not true. Go to any town in Texas, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, actually pretty much anywhere in the South on a Friday night in the Fall and tell me those people do not care about HS sports. College sports are huge in this country.
Is it because my native tongue isn't English or is my English better than the natives'?
