Olawale Ajimotokan
10 July 2009
Lagos — The Lagos bidding Sub-seat for the up-coming Under-17 World Cup in Nigeria, in confidence of its bid being successful, has decided to package an international invitational football tournament to test-run its facilities, which the FIFA Inspection Team had described as very good and being near excellence. Towards this, the Lagos State Government had created the Lagos International Youth Cup tournament which will bring two teams from Europe and one from Africa to Lagos, to be joined by a host team, to compete in a nine-day championship.
The week-long tournament, which will take place inside the Teslim Balogun Stadium, has had one team from Spain, another from Italy given invitations from Europe while the single team from Africa, outside Nigeria, will be coming from South Africa.
According to organisers, the two teams from Europe are Valencia FC from Spain and Genoa FC from Italy. The South African side is the popular SuperSport United. The three will be joined by a host team that have been named Team Lagos. All the the teams would be youth wings of their professional parent sides.
In a media chat organised held yesterday to usher in the international friendly invitational, organising bosses released a fixture, which would have the host team, Team Lagos, open the tournament's account with an opening match against Valencia, on August 2. The other participating teams, Genoa of Italy and SuperSport of South Africa will lock horns same day, after the opening match between the hosts and Valencia.
Apart from the test-running of facilities that the tournament is expected to be used for, the state also hope to achieve a high degree of destination branding with it. Yesterday's draw that had in attendance the state's commissioner for Sports and Social Development, Prince Adeniyi Adele among other top dignitaries only reinforced that desire. The teams will observe a two-day break on August 3 and 4, which will afford them opportunities to see the acquatic city in its full splendour.
However, when hostilities resume on August 5 it will see Team Lagos taking on SuperSport while Genoa will trade tackles with Valencia.
The last group fixtures are billed for August 8 and would see SuperSport play Valencia while in the other game Lagos will clash against Genoa.
The team with most points will be crowned winners of the Lagos International Youth Cup. And in case of a tie in points, all other aspects of tie-breaking in the game, such as goals difference, number of goals scored, would be applied to decide the order of merit.
All the three foreign participants of the tournament are expected to arrive the country on July 31 for the tournament.
At the end of their last inspection tour of the country last month, the head of the FIFA Inspection Team, Jack Warner not only had used glowing terms to describe what the Lagos State Government has put on ground for the hosting of one of the venues, he had actually told the remaining bidding centers to come down to the sub-seat to behold one of the wonders of the modern world in facilities preparation and take their positive cue.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2009 This Day. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
