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Home team Panama is the favorite to progress to the Classification Stage of the 2017 CONCACAF Men's U-17 Championship from this Group A pairing. It will be through with a win or a draw. Though Los Canaleros dropped points against Haiti in their last game, they did not lose and did not look likely to lose. The match ended 0-0 because Haiti defended well and Panama couldn't make multiple chances counts.
So form suggests Panama will get what it needs out of this match. Curacao, however, knows it will advance with a win, and could advance with a draw if the preceding game - Honduras vs Haiti - has delivered the right result (a win for Haiti).
The underdog tag shouldn't bother Curacao too much - it has been the underdog in both its previous matches in this tournament, and it won one of those, 1-0 over Haiti. What will be of concern is that it has also been largely out-played in both those previous games. But it proved against Haiti that it can create and take scoring chances. With a bit of luck, perhaps the Caribbean team can find the improbably result it needs to move on in this competition.
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