By Chetan Kulkarni

KOLKATA: With the curtains coming down today on yet another thrilling edition of the AFC Youth Championship, the battle for the two individual honours has also intensified with three players each in contention for the Top Goalscorer and Most Valuable Player (MVP) awards.

Two Korea Republic players - Shin Young-rok and Shim Young-sung - are in a logjam atop the scorers' chart with their neighbour from the North of the peninsula DPR Korea’s Kim Kum-il and Iraq ’s A’ala Khshen. All four players have netted four goals each.

The three Koreans will be featuring on the final day of the championship today when DPR Korea take on Japan in the summit clash while Korea Republic face off with Jordan in the third-fourth place playoff.

Korea Republic’s Shin Young-rok said: “I would like to win this award as a consolation. I would surely like to score tomorrow."

Kim Kum-il, whose inspirational show steered unfancied DPR Korea to the Final, is also a frontrunner for the MVP award alongwith Japan ’s Yasuhito Morishima and Korea Republic ’s Song Jin-hyung.

The DPR Korea playmaker scored a brace against Iran (5-0) and was also on target against Iraq (2-0) in the quarter-final and against Jordan, scoring the solitary goal of the semi-final.

Shim Young-sung netted a brace against Jordan in his team’s 3-0 win in the opener and later went on to add one goal each against India and Japan. His teammate Shin Young-rok scored a hat-trick in his side’s 7-0 thrashing of Kyrgyzstan and later found the net once against India.

Japan’s Yasuhito Morishima , Korea Republic’s Lee Sang-ho and Song Jin-hyung have all scored three goals so far and will also have a chance to surpass the trio for this prestigious award.

A fairplay award will also be presented on Sunday to a team gaining the highest fairplay points in the tournament.