Arsenal youngster’s team kick off u20 World Cup campaign with win | OneFootball

The Colombia u20s kicked off their World Cup campaign with a win on Monday night, with Arsenal’s Alexei Rojas part of the squad.

Photo via Rojas on Instagram

With the u20 World Cup kicking off last week, Arsenal youth goalkeeper Alexei Rojas has been away with the Colombia u20s for much of September.

Colombia played a couple of warm-up games in the weeks leading up to the tournament, with Rojas playing in a 3-2 friendly win over Mexico last week.

But Rojas wasn’t named in the starting lineup for Colombia’s first game of the official tournament on Monday, instead making the bench against Saudi Arabia.

Photo via Rojas on Instagram

Though Rojas would have been pleased to see his team coming away with an opening-day win, the 1-0 result and a clean sheet for Jordan Garcia perhaps makes it even more difficult for the Arsenal 20-year-old to break into the team.

Rojas has regularly been called up by the Colombia u20s for three years now, making the squad on almost 40 occasions, but he’s played for them fewer than 10 times.

Colombia are next in action against Norway on October 2nd, before concluding the group stage against Nigeria on October 5th.

Photo via Rojas on Instagram

With an opening-day win and the likelihood that even a third-place finish (out of four teams) will be enough to reach the knockout stages, it’s already probable that Colombia will be involved in the last-16.

If that’s the case, Rojas won’t be back at Arsenal until October 9th at the earliest. The hope is that he’ll get a couple of games under his belt in the meantime.