AIFF General Secretary hopeful, FIFA U-17 Women’s WC venues will be ready in time


AIFF General Secretary hopeful, FIFA U-17 Women’s WC venues will be ready in time

WhatsApp Image 2020 03 25 at 22.25.20

On Wednesday, General Secretary of the All India Football Federation Kushal Das said that he is quite hopeful FIFA U-17 Women’s WC venues will be ready in time. Das was speaking in a webinar arranged by the Sports Industry Awards (SPIA) Asia entitled ‘Sports Industry in India.

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“These are unforeseen circumstances, and there have been some setbacks. But three of the five venues have already hosted the U-17 FIFA World Cup  in 2017 and these do not require much of changes,” AIFF official website quoted Das as saying.

“Among the other two venues — Bhubaneswar and Ahmedabad — most of the work is on schedule. In Odisha, we are working closely with the State government, and also in Ahmedabad. We are quite hopeful that the venues will be ready in time,” he added in a statement.

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This tournament was scheduled to take place in this year, it will be held from 17 february to 7 March in 2021 because of the pandemic situation. It will keep the original age criteria of the players who will play in the U 17 world Cup. Players born on or after January 1, 2003 or on December 31, 2005 can play in this tournament.

Football activities in India have been stopped or suspended due to the pandemic situation. Das also mentioned that the preparatory activities of this tournament would start soon.

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“Right now our coach is back in Sweden, while the players are back at their respective residences. There are some travel restrictions but we are working on how and when we can safely restart the camp,” he said.

“The coach is quite hopeful because this is a situation that each is team facing. So we are all on a level playing field. We had a number of exposure tours planned for the team but we will have to revisit those plans,” Das added.

Due to covid 19 lockdown, there are a lot of challenges in many areas. This time Das believe that games has shown the world a path of digitalisation because many seminars important meetings have been held online.

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“There have been travel issues and the people have been practising social distancing. But we have seen that a lot of things can be done online. We have helped SAI (Sports Authority of India) organise a coaching course, which was attended by around 1,000 coaches from across the country,” Das said that.

“I don’t think so many coaches would have been able to join had it not been an online discipline. We had our Head of Coach Education Savio (Madeira), Senior Men’s Team Head Coach Igor (Stimac), Technical Director Doru, and even Croatia World Cup coach (Zlatko) Dalic instructing the coaches,” he continued.

AIFF general secretary previously told that the federation has itself conducted its Executive Committee meeting, the Technical Committee meeting, and also the Women’s Committee meeting online.

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