City U18 travel to Lichfield City U18 for the first round of the FA Youth Cup on Monday (7pm KO).
Hear from head coach Sam Tillen and forward Dakara Wifa as well as important match information in this preview.
Sam Tillen’s thoughts:
“It’s a great opportunity, proper knockout football, something the lads haven’t experienced this season. The FA Cup, especially when I was younger, was something that you’d always inspire to participate in and that’s the same with the Youth Cup. It’s the standout competition at this age group and we’ll do our best to do as well as we can in it.
[On personal FA Youth Cup experience] “It’ll be a good experience, I’m looking forward to it. I had some brief experience as a player when I was 16 as a school boy. That experience was great, I got the chance to play at Stamford Bridge so it’s an opportunity to create memories and hopefully we can have some positive ones but we’ll have to get past a difficult opponent on Monday.
[On Lichfield City] “It’s going to be a very tough game. It’s a difficult process to go through a number of qualifying rounds to get into the first round proper - there’s been teams in our league that haven’t managed it so we know it’s going to be a tough test. They’ll be treated with every respect, it’ll be a big occasion for them but also for us as it’s the first round of the cup.”
Dakara Wifa speaks ahead of FA Youth Cup tie:
“I think I’ve done well, started the season well. I’ve got involved with a lot of the goals and I think my performances have been good. Obviously there are always areas to improve on, but as a whole I’ve started well.
“I’m looking forward to it. I think it’ll be a really good challenge for all of us to see how far we can get. All of us want to go further this year, we’re really optimistic on how the good the team is and how far we can get in this competition.
[On Lichfield City] “It should be a good competitive game. They’ve done well to get where they are, for a non-league team it’s really good to get to round one of the FA Youth Cup and they’ll give us a challenging game. It’ll be something different as we don’t usually play games against teams like this on a weekly basis.”
A look at the opposition:
Lichfield have progressed through multiple qualifying rounds to secure their place in round one of the cup, with victories against Rugby Borough, Rushall Olympic, Chasetown all before a 1-0 third qualifying round win against AFC Wulfrunians.
Match information:
Sam Tillen’s side will look to reach the second round of the FA Youth Cup on Monday evening at the Trade Tyre Community Stadium against Lichfield.
Supporters are welcome to attend the game, with tickets available for purchase on the day (£5 adults, £3 concessions) and will also be able to keep up to date with the game with updates available from our Academy X (formerly Twitter) account.