With Turkev FIFA Continues Opening UP to the Muslim World | ||
With Turkev FIFA Continues Opening UP to the Muslim World The U-20 World Cup in Turkey is another sign that FIFA wants to open up to the Muslim world. With the U-20 World Cup in Turkey starting Friday, inter-national football continues to open up to the Muslim world, a trend accentuated in recent years and has as its principal exponent the choice of Qatar as host of the World Cup in 2022. In 2013, three major FIFA compe-titions will take place in Islamic coun-tries: the U-17 World Cup in the United Arab Emirates (October 17 to Novem¬ber 8), the Club World Cup in Morocco (December 11-21) and of course now the U-20 WC in Turkey. But if there is a milestone in this opening it was the concession to the small emirate Qatar as being hosts of the World Cup, the first in a Muslim country. "With Qatar we opened a new world for football, a new culture. The Arab world, which had tried several times, with Morocco or Egypt, for example, could legitimately qualify for this," said FIFA president Sepp Blatter in an interview in the French newspaper L'Equipe. Until the nod to Qatar-2022, FIFA had intended for the Muslim world to organize junior tournaments, and the U-20 has historically had an important role. Turkey-2013 is not exactly the first edition of the Youth World Cup to be held in a nation of Islamic culture and tradition, since previously there were six of the eighteen (Tunisia-1977, Sau¬di Arabia-1989, Qatar-1995, Malay¬sia-1997, United Arab Emirates-2003 and Egypt-2009). In 1999 it was also played in Nige¬ria, a country that divides the popula¬tion almost in half between Christians and Muslims. This edition takes place on Turkish soil, a country with part of its territory in Europe and they want the event to break down prejudices and further im-prove its image abroad. "We are more than prepared to ded-icate our wonderful Turkish hospitality to all visiting teams and their fans. Ex-pect it to be a great festival for Turkish football and the world", said Yaminci Servet, president of the organizers, last month after a Blatter visit to An¬kara. This nineteenth edition of the FIFA U-20 is the first major tournament of the International Football Federation (FIFA) organization in Turkey. | ||
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