Richard Garcia, Michael Marrone and Aziz Behich made the final cut of 20 players for the Qantas Socceroos East Asian Football Federation (EAFF) East Asian Cup 2013 qualifying tournament.
Melbourne Heart FC will represent the largest club contingent in Holger Osieck’s squad of 20 players for the East Asian Football Federation (EAFF) East Asian Cup 2013 qualifying tournament.
Heart trio Richard Garcia, Michael Marrone and Aziz Behich all made the final cut from the original squad of 25 players, with Dario Vidosic, Rostyn Griffiths and Luke Wilkshire ruled out of final selection due to injury and Ben Halloran and Osama Malik not selected in the final squad.
Michael Marrone is in line to make his senior international debut for the Qantas Socceroos, while Behich, who debuted a fortnight ago retains his spot and Garcia returns to international football.
All three have played the full 90 minutes of each of Heart’s opening eight matches.
The Socceroos will depart for Hong Kong tomorrow morning (Friday 30 November) and will play their first match of the tournament against Hong Kong on Monday 3 December (kick-off 8:50pm AEDT), followed by DPR Korea on Wednesday 5 December (kick-off 11:30pm AEDT), then Guam on Friday 7 December (kick-off 8:50pm AEDT) with their final match of the tournament against Chinese Taipei on Sunday 9 December (kick-off 8:00pm AEDT).
The teams that will participate in the EAFF East Asian Cup are Japan, Korea Republic & China PR with a fourth team determined by a qualification process. The qualifiers for of the EAFF East Asian Cup 2013 will be played in Hong Kong from 1-9 December 2012 and will involve teams from Australia, Chinese-Taipei, Guam, Hong Kong & DPR Korea.
The EAFF East Asian Cup 2013 will be held in Seoul, Korea Republic from 20-28 July 2013.
