Mexico beats USA on penalties to win CONCACAF U-17 Championship

Mexico received an equalizing goal in stoppage time by Carlos Jimenez to send the CONCACAF U-17 Final to penalties and defeated the United States 5-4 to lift the trophy. This was the Mexicans third straight U-17 championship.

While these finals are always kind of anti-climatic events due to the teams knowing they’ve qualified for the World Cup before reaching it, both teams were “going for it” and had a dozen quality chances each to prove it.

Can we talk about Andrew Carleton for a moment?

If you can ignore that atrocious clearance for a minute, Carleton hitting that first time on the turn is a great finish for a 16 year old kid. If he keeps improving, the sky is the limit for this kid.

The Americans’ man of the match in this one was goalkeeper Justin Garces. This kid denied Mexico of two or three “sure” goals and should give John Hackworth some confidence in his abilities heading into the World Cup this fall.

Mexico, United States, Costa Rica, and Honduras will participate in the 2017 FIFA U-17 World Cup this fall in India.