England will play in the final of the Under-20 World Cup for the first time when it plays Venezuela in Sunday's final of the 2017 tournament in Suwon. The English will be the underdogs against La Vinotinto, but reaching the final is quite an accomplishment for a team that only made it to the semifinals of the U-20 World Cup twice before.

Five and a half years before it will host the World Cup, Qatar, the tiny Gulf emirate, is in the news. A diplomatic dispute with Gulf neighbors has resulted in Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates cutting ties with Qatar, withdrawing their ambassadors and launching an economic blockade, including denial of airspace for flights to and from Doha.

In addition to two World Cup qualifiers, including an Azteca Stadium clash with the USA on Sunday, Mexico will be playing at the Confederations Cup and the Gold Cup, while squeezing in a couple of friendlies. El Tri could, within a 60-day period, play as many as 17 games depending on how far it progresses in the cups.

Cheick Tiote, who died on Monday in China at the age of 30 after fainting at practice with Beijing Enterprises, scored only one goal in seven seasons at Newcastle United, but it made him a legend at Tyneside.

Grim play and a dreary final most often come to mind when the 1990 World Cup is discussed, but the life of a 12-year-old Italian boy changed dramatically by what he observed during that month of play. At the time, attacker Gianluigi Buffon stepped onto the field to score goals rather than prevent them, but watching the heroics of Cameroonian keeper Thomas N'Kono playing in a third World Cup convinced him to take a different path.

After my last article, some of the readers correctly stated that I did not include the U-12, U-13 and U-14 categories in the analysis. I knew I did not and I did it on a purpose. I wanted to see the distribution of the full pledged (U-12 through U-18) and U-15/16 and U-17/18 academies in the country.