By Albatross
March 14 2005

Hartlepool United's Youth Team - complete with H'Angus apparently - are getting ready to fly out to the US to take part in the Dallas Cup. We won our section in this competition last year, and have been rewarded with an invite to the Super Group - the Blue Riband section of the tournament.

The players, coach Paul Stephenson, and H'Angus fly out on Friday Morning, ready to take part in the tournament that will start for Pools next Sunday. Pools will be facing Tigres of Mexico, Jubilo Iwata of Japan and So Cal United from California in the group stages, while other teams taking part in the tournament include sides from Brazil, Costa Rica, the Canadian National Side and Aston Villa. We start off with a game against Jubilo on Sunday, play Tigres the following day and then SoCal on Wednesday; qualification would then see a semi-final on Friday with a third place playoff taking place on Saturday and the final the following day.

It's a tough qualification though; only the top side in each group of four goes through, with the side with the next best record across all three groups joining them in the semi-finals. Paul Stephenson may be hopeful that we won't be just making up the numbers, but just qualifying for the knockout phase would be a decent achievement. The development of the players, as he highlights, is the more important aspect and while another trophy might be nice more players ready for the first team is the goal.

Previous winners of the Super Group give you an idea of the level of the competition. West Ham and Nottingham Forest have won it (Forest in 2002), Real Madrid won two years on the spin, and a number of teams from Brazil (including Corinthians and Sao Paulo) and Mexico have their names on the trophy alongside San Lorenzo from Argentina. Tigres, one of our group opponents, won the Super Group in 2003, but the defending champions are Atletico Paranaense from Brazil.

The Official Site is promising updates, but anyone who can't wait to find out the scores on the doors can visit the Official Dallas Cup Website that will have results and maybe one or two brief reports on games.