But it’s not just players who benefit from this level of competition as OFC technical director Patrick Jacquemet recently revealed.
Jacquemet spent four weeks in Turkey during June and July as a member of the FIFA Technical Study Group analysing some of the world’s up-and-coming players.
“It was the intention of FIFA to have someone from each confederation involved so for Oceania they contacted me and it was with pleasure that I accepted,” Jacquemet says.
“It could be more or it could be someone else from the region, but what is important is to remain informed of what is happening at the top level. So to be part of a competition, whether it’s at U-20 level or a World Cup especially, is enormous because it helps us to realise the work that has been done, or which remains to be done, to try and progress and achieve that international level.”
The FIFA U-20 World Cup Turkey 2013 was the third FIFA TSG Jacquemet has taken part in after the U-17 World Cups in Korea 2007 and Mexico in 2011. OFC head of coach education Didier Chambaron was involved in U-17 World Cup in 2009 as well as Tahiti coach Eddy Etaeta who was invited to take part in the U-20 World Cup in Colombia 2011.
“It’s important that everyone to have this vision for the future and to always help our member associations try and keep up with the higher level as well as the new trends so that offers us in the OFC Technical Department the ability to refine our objectives and also orient our programme towards the reality and trends at a global level.”
Covering a FIFA World Cup as a member of the TSG is not just a matter of watching a series of matches between the top countries in the world, but is actually a lot of work according to Jacquemet.
“Overall there were 52 matches and I was in charge of 13 encounters,” he says. “It’s a lot of work to analyse the exchanges with the technicians and at the end create a comprehensive technical report on the entire competition.
He says having 12 members in the group made things interesting with each person bringing something different and also allowing for free-flowing exchanges of ideas about their vision and new trends in the game.
“It was very enriching work and on reflection, for me especially, in terms of knowledge because we were exchanging ideas with different people from different confederations – Asia, Europe – people of a high level so it was very educational.”
While he worked in a two-man team alongside Belhassen Malouche of Tunisia analysing ten matches during the tournament’s group stages as well as round of 16 and quarter-finals, a personal highlight was the opportunity to participate in the semi-final encounter between France and Ghana.
“Unfortunately I couldn’t watch any of New Zealand’s matches because I wasn’t at the same site, though I did manage to watch one of their matches on television. I followed France because it is my country, but I could only follow them as a technician and France has shown a lot of maturity with the players,” he says.
“I was more impressed by individuals than the team as a collective becaue all of them are already playing at a high level and are incredibly mature like Paul Pogba with Juventus. He took part in the UEFA Champions League and he is champion of Italy at 19 years old. It’s less the collective but the maturity of the individuals that helped France go right to the end.”
Jacquemet says a trend that he found has emerged from this tournament is the willingness of teams to attack and not just sit back and defend as has been evidenced in previous tournaments.
“For us it was, you could say, a radical change. We saw a lot of goals and the emergence of some very good players who I think we will see even more of in a few years. Over time a lot of players have been unveiled at this level of competition like Messi or Maradona and we saw some individuals who have a lot of talent this time around too. The Frenchman Paul Pogba plays with Juventus already, the Uruguayan Nicolas Lopez who plays in Italy or the Colombian Juan Fernando Quintero who plays in Italy as well – so you could say already that these are players of a high level who will only continue to grow.”
Now the OFC technical director is looking at ways of applying what he has learnt of the evolving world game to bring back to the Oceania region.
“What is important for us now to discuss with our coaches here in Oceania what is happening at an international level now at a competition like the U-20s or even at the Confederations Cup and the trends that are beginning to take shape,” he says.
“For me or someone else taking part in a competition at this level is important for Oceania because it can change this experience of how to anticipate the new forms of the game, new organisation and new trends of modern football.”

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