Owner of division one side New Edubiase and a member of Black Starlets management committee Abdul Salam Yakubu believes the Starlets will defeat the rest of the teams in their group to advance to the next stage in their upcoming U-17 FIFA World Cup in India.

The Black Starlets despite zoned in a tough group must negotiate their way past host nation India, Colombia and USA in Group A.

Yakubu told Accra based Happy FM, he is optimistic his side  have a great chance to top the group but will need good preparations.

"We are taking nine points to the next stage. We can beat all the teams but it will depend on whether we can go by the program being drawn to us by the technical team after the Africa Cup," Salam said.

"We have a mini tournament to partake in and afterwards, we need to embark on a special camping at a place which is closer to India."

"Having said that, we have a friendly game against India, so after drawing them in the same group we'll need to play them and use it to assess our strength before the start of the tournament."

"These are some of the things when we do, we can have it easy at the tourney but if we don't and we underrate the teams in the group, I think we'll have the shock of our lives."

The Black Starlets were runner up to Cameroon in the just ended U-17 Africa Cup of Nations and are set to kick off their campaign from October 6, 2017.