Afghanistan’s U-16 Football Team beat Tajikistan 1-0 in their Central Asian Football Association (CAFA) U-16 tournamentmatch on Saturday night.

The tournament started on Thursday in Tashkent in Uzbekistan and will run through to Tuesday. Four teams includingAfghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan are taking part in the tournament.

 Afghanistan lost its first match 4-0 against hosts Uzbekistan on Thursday.

“We needed this victory and I told all my players that we need to win this match,” said the team’s coach, Sayed Hadi Kazimi.

“We are ready for the next match and we want to end at least in second place in the tournament,” he said.  

On Monday, Afghanistan, the defending champions, will face Kyrgyzstan in their final match. The tournament winner will be determined by the team with the most points.

“It was a good match and we needed to win the match,” a member of the team, Haroon Naseri said adding that “we will win the match against Kyrgyzstan too.”

Jamshid Khalili, another member of the team said: “We thank the people who prayed for us and we are happy that we won the match and will move to the next round. We hope to also win the next match.”

The Afghan team will travel to Malaysia in about two months where they will take part in the qualifying rounds of the AFC U-16 Championships - which for some teams will mean a berth in the FIFA U-17 World Cup Peru 2019.

This tournament will be played from September 20.