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Leeds United striker Mateo Joseph wants to make sure he impresses with the England under-20s this week.

The Spanish-born forward, formerly of Espanyol, could play for the senior Three Lions one day through his father.

After scoring 16 goals for Leeds at youth level this term, Joseph wants to prove he is good enough for the youth international stage as well. He has been training with Ian Foster's squad over the last few days

Coach Ian Foster stated to the Manchester Evening News on their upcoming games: "In order to get to an Under-20 World Cup you must finish in the top five teams in Europe at Under-19 level and that's very, very difficult.

In order to qualify for the 19s Euros there's only seven teams qualify out of 53, so when this group of players won it last year we knocked Portugal out of the elite round but we went to a tournament that didn't have obviously Portugal, Spain, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, big nations didn't qualify.

"This is a tournament that historically is a massive tournament, a massive stepping stone for players into senior squads. Historically when you look back and you read some of the stories, you look back at the Argentina-winning group of Messi, Aguero and Zabaleta and they speak so fondly of their experiences at this tournament.

"I know our group of players from 2017 look back so fondly on it. We've just come off the back of winning a major tournament at junior level and the big challenge for us now is winning after winning so we can do something that's unprecedented in a European nation winning a European Championship and then going on to win a World Cup at Under-20 level. That's our aim. We believe we can do it. We know how difficult it will be. But we go into these three games in March preparing against really tough and challenging opposition to make sure we're ready to go into a wonderful tournament."

This article first appeared on Tribal Football and was syndicated with permission.

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