England's finest

England will take on Belarus, Turkey and hosts Italy in the group phase which will see two sides go through to the knock-out stages of the tournament.

In each of the last four seasons, England have reached the semi-finals of the competition and coach Peacock believes the squad he has selected is good enough to challenge the strong opposition his side will face.

"I'm happy with it - it's a strong squad with some really good players who I am looking forward to seeing in action," Peacock said.

"Obviously it was difficult selecting the 18 names on the list as throughout this season I have been selecting new players which gave me plenty of players to choose from.

"The three sides we are up against all have great quality and it will be a really good test for my boys to see how they do.

"We are hopeful of making it into the semi-finals of the competition and see what happens from there."

England qualified for the tournament in some style and were one of only two sides to win all three of their matches.

They got off to a good start with a 3-1 win over Serbia & Montenegro at the Britannia Stadium and they followed that up with a 3-0 win over Northern Ireland in front of over 8,000 fans at Molineux. In their final game at Walsall's Bescot Stadium, England saw off the Republic of Ireland 3-0.

Peacock has only made one change from the squad which played in those qualifiers with Lewis McGugan of Nottingham Forest, fully fit after a recovering from an injury which ruled him out of the qualifiers, replacing Lee Cattermole.

England will be hoping that Joe Garner and Hogan Ephraim can carry on their superb goalscoring form, the two strikers having registered twelve goals so far this season.

James Vaughan of Everton has got off to a great start in his international career with two goals in three games, whilst Southampton's Theo Walcott has scored five times in nine games.

Walcott, along with Ipswich Town's Darryl Knights, was involved in last night's FA Youth Cup Final First Leg and both will be important members of the England party.

England are ranked as Europe's top side in UEFA's seeding system and will be confident of progressing through to the latter stages of the competition.

The European U17 Championship matches are being played in six towns near Pisa in Tuscany: Cascina, San Giuliano Terme, Santa Maria a Monte, Castelfranco di Sotto, Santa Croce sull'Arno and Pontedera.

The competition starts on 05 May and will be covered extensively here on TheFA.com.

England U17 Squad, UEFA European U17 Championship, May 2005