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France looks a lot like the favorite to win this tournament, having qualified as European U-19 champion and arriving with a squad stacked with professional experience. Defender Issa Diop has more than 50 appearances in Ligue 1 for Toulouse in the last two seasons; Jerome Onguene was a regular for Sochaux in Ligue 2 until moving to Stuttgart in January; Jean-Kevin Augustin has started to get time with the Paris Saint-Germain first team, and was the top scorer in the UEFA qualifying tournament for this World Cup; Lucas Tousart saw regular minutes with Lyon this season: it feels like everywhere you look in this squad, there are seasoned pros - which is unusual for most U-20 teams, and perhaps particularly so for European squads, because the general view in Europe tends to be that top-level U-20 players are better off playing for their clubs than youth national teams.(Case in point: the best know French player eligible for this tournament - Monaco's Kylian Mbappe - is not in the France squad.)
We'll find out how good France is as the tournament progresses, but the team is expected to win its group without tremendous difficulty. Honduras will be the first to test that expectation and find out whether the rest of Group E really does seem to be playing for second.
In the Honduras squad - and expected to feature as a starter for as long as his team involved in this World Cup - is New York Red Bulls II's Douglas Martinez. An attacking player who his national team tends to see as a right winger, Martinez impressed in his only appearance for NYRB II to date: he came off the bench for the last 15 minutes of a game against Harrisburg City Islanders and scored.
Los Catrachos beat neither Mexico nor the USA in this year's CONCACAF U-20 Championship, but they ran them both close - losing 1-0 to El Tri, and holding the US to a scoreless draw before losing the final on penalties. A similar performance against France would win the second-best team in CONCACAF considerable respect.
Per livesoccertv.com, here's where to find the game if watching from the USA:
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