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| November 30, 2003 | Sunday | Shawwal 5, 1424 |
FIFA chief slams clubs for blocking U-20 players
DUBAI, Nov 29: Sepp Blatter, the president of world football’s ruling body FIFA, on Saturday denounced clubs who have refused to release players for the World Under-20 championship, saying they were devaluing the development of the sport worldwide.
Boca Juniors have blocked playmaker Cesar Tavez from travelling with the Argentina squad to the three-week, 24-nation tournament in the Emirates while Leeds United withdrew striker James Milner on Tuesday, four days before England’s opening match against Japan on Saturday night.
Boca Juniors even went to court to try and prevent Tavez from playing in the Emirates and even though the legal process was ultimately withdrawn, Blatter said the latest club versus clash did not bode well for the future.
“If we start resorting to the courts for such a simple case, we may as well say goodbye to football,” he said.
The World Youth cup has traditionally acted as a breeding ground for talented young players and Blatter said it was up to the national federations to impress this upon its elite youth.
“I can’t understand why some young players don’t want to come because this is a wonderful experience for them.”
Speaking at the Soccerex conference in Dubai, Blatter also re-iterated his call for less televised football, and fewer matches in general, while at the same time seemingly contradicting that stance by supporting moves to resurrect the much-maligned World Club Championship, postponed last year through lack of sufficient marketing but rescheduled for the summer of 2005.
“The consequence of too much football is that audiences will go down,” said Blatter.
“You cannot screen matches every day, otherwise it is not digestible. Three times in eight days, which is sometimes what we have, is simply too much.”
But he defended his organisation’s decision to bring back the World Club championship - the competition Manchester United famously contested a couple of years ago instead of defending the FA Cup but which has since been fiercely resisted by major European clubs.
“The players in Europe say they don’t want to play yet they go around the world in other tournaments just for more money,” charged Blatter.
“The game is not just about Europe, we should all eat from the same table. We have the Champions League and the South American Cup but football is also about African, Asia, North America and Oceania.”—AFP
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