By Daniel Robertson
Beaten by Sao Paulo in the 2007 Super Group final, English Premier League giants Chelsea FC bring their academy to Dallas cup for the second time in four years looking to take home their first Super Group crown. The Chelsea Academy comes to Dallas on a high as just Monday the Academy booked their trip to the FA Youth Cup Final beating Blackburn 5-0 on aggregate to make their second final in three years.
Chelsea is bringing pretty much their entire Academy team that sits tied for second in the U18 Premier League Academy Group A standings. The attack is led up front by Swedish U17 forward Marko Mitrovic. Purchased from Malmo at the age of 16 for 300,000 pounds, Mitrovic leads the team by a wide margin in league goals with 15 as well as appearances with 25 of 28 games. Paired with Mitrovic could be Slovakian U17 International Milan Lalkovic.
Looking to get service to Mitrovic and Lalkovic will be speedy left-sided winger Gokhan Tore. The German born player has featured for the Turkey U21's at just 17 years old and joined Chelsea from Bayer Leverkusen in 2009. Tore is joined in the midfield by Guinea-Bisseau born, Portugal youth international Aliu Djalo. Third on the team in league appearances with 23 starts, Djalo is an attacking midfielder with lots of skill.
The rest of the team can be found here as Chelsea does a much better job than I can describing their youth players.
Chelsea opens up group play tomorrow in a prestigious tournament game at Pizza Hut Park against hometown team FC Dallas at 3PM. They continue group play on Monday afternoon at 2PM against Costa Ricans LD Alajuelense on PHP field #7 before rounding out group play against CF Monterrey on Wednesday at 2PM on PHP field #6.
Chelsea Roster:
1. Sam Walker
2. Mohammed Faraj Ahamed
3. Kenneth Andrew Strickland
4. Daniel Mills Pappoe
5. Todd Kane
6. Danny Stenning
7. Jacopo Sala
8. Aliu Djalo
9. Daniel Philliskirk
10. Jhon Pirez
11. Gokhan Tore
12. Milan Lalkovic
13. Niclas Heimann
14. Rohan Ince
15. Bobby Kirobi Devyne
16. Aziz Deen-Conteh
17. Billy Clifford
18. Archange Nkumu
19. Marko Mitrovic
20. George Saville
21. Ben Sampayo
22. Anton Rodgers
Thanks for reading my Dallas Cup Super Group team previews. Unfortunately, I won't have time to write up a preview for Mexico as time has caught up to me and I'll be out at the fields all day tomorrow with Al bringing you as many updates, pictures and video as we can. The Mexico roster can be found here .
To get the most up to date scores and news stay with the Dallas Cup Blog as Al and I will be updating here all day tomorrow posting goals, recaps and basically as much as we can do to bring the Dallas Cup closer to those who can't make it out here. For the quickest score updates follow us on twitter at twitter.com/dallascupXXXI
Thanks again for reading and stay with us as we bring you Dallas Cup XXXI for the next 8 days at Pizza Hut Park!
Past Super Group previews
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