“Uruguay champ! chanted tens of thousands of fans who took to the streets of the Uruguayan capital on Sunday to celebrate the country’s first title in a FIFA Under-20 World Cup. The joy can be seen on all faces in Montevideo after the youth team beat Italy 1-0 in the final held at the Diego Maradona stadium in La Plata, Argentina.
Two lost finals
“It’s incredible, the first time in my life that I’ve experienced this… always with the fighting spirit of the ‘charruas’, today we got the cut”, jubilant with AFP Lorena Pereira, a 43-year-old housewife who wears the Uruguayan flag painted on her face and hugs her husband crying. “She will remember it all her life”, she adds, speaking of her 10-year-old daughter Paula, who watches with a big smile the excitement on the avenue du 18-Juillet, where a giant screen broadcast the match in front of the municipal palace, a classic place for popular gatherings.
Uruguay, whose senior national team won the 1930 and 1950 World Cups, had never won an Under-20 World Cup. But the third time was the lucky one, having lost the finals in 1997 in Malaysia and 2013 in Turkey, to Argentina and France respectively.